


And all your beauty stand you in no stead

by Blanquette



Series: The Yew Tree [2]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Angst, Backstory, Consequences, Developing Friendships, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, Eventual Happy Ending, Falling In Love, Found Family, M/M, Magical Realism, Redemption, Slow Burn, Some Humor, Strangers to Lovers, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:47:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24490765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blanquette/pseuds/Blanquette
Summary: Minghao faces off with an irate customer, but there's more to him than meet the eye. Namely a century-old curse, that will bring back more from the past than anyone really wanted. Or needed. Consequences, man.
Relationships: Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan, Jeon Wonwoo/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Series: The Yew Tree [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754734
Comments: 17
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I meant to write a cute little spin-off for Minghao but then it started turning into a monster with an actual plot and stuff. It got away from me so fast you have no idea. 
> 
> If there's any new readers, you should probably read the previous part for it to make sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had to split this thing into lil bits, and here is the first chapter! I'm still editing the next one and writing the third but I promise I won't let you guys hanging too long. Hope you like it, it starts kinda slow but I promise it picks up!

**1** **.**

_The dream is strange. Dark, eerie, something chilling in the nothingness it brings._ _He_ _cannot see, cannot hear, cannot feel. Yet something is breathing there. Something old, something evil, something that slithers and hunts for him, he knows, yet he is rooted in place; there is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. He waits. He waits to be consumed, and when the darkness opens up before him he doesn’t scream, doesn’t resist. He submits._ _T_ _he jaws close on him,_ _and_ _nothing is left._

  
  


**2** **.**

Things are strangely normal, Jeonghan thinks, sprawled over the counter of Minghao’s little shop, the afternoon slowly dragging to an end. He’s playing with a wisp of something that looks like dark smoke, passing it between the fingers of his right hand like he would with a penny. _Your shadows aren’t here to execute li_ _tt_ _l_ _e_ _circus tricks_ , Minghao’s voice echoes in his mind. _They like it_ , Jeonghan had countered as a book had flown across the room, Joshua applauding from his place on the couch. _How can they like anything? They’re shadows._

Jeonghan doesn’t know, but Jeonghan is pretty sure they do. He’s wondering if he can make them do something more complex than hurtling things across space when the bell above the shop’s door jingles, heralding the arrival of a customer Jeonghan hopes is the last of the day. He’s tired and cranky and he knows Joshua must be making tea, now, ready to curl up on the couch of the library where he practically lives, trying to catch up on centuries of progress through books after books. It’s slow going, but no one minds, especially not Jeonghan, who pillows his head in Joshua’s lap and pretends to read until he falls asleep. And he dreams, now, sometimes dark, sometimes light dreams, their meaning ever so changing.

“This is crap,” a rude voice interrupts his thoughts, accompanied by the clatter of crystals thrown haphazardly on the counter.

“Excuse me?” Jeonghan asks pointedly, looking up at the customer. The man looks angry, dark eyes staring at Jeonghan from under a mess of curly hair and if he didn’t look so tired he’d be intimidating, Jeonghan thinks, feeling his shadows pool at his feet. There’s something pulsing there, inside the man, something barely contained that has the thin hair of Jeonghan’s nape stand on end.

“This is useless crap,” the man repeats, pointing at the crystals strewn about the counter. “How can you sell this shit?”

“People buy it,” Jeonghan shrugs, and judging from the man’s scowl it is the wrong answer to give.

“So you’re a fraud?”

“Look man, I’m just the cashier,” Jeonghan says, rolling his eyes, hands raised in surrender.

“I want to talk to the manager, then.”

Jeonghan gapes at the man, who crossed his arms over his chest, staring darkly at him.

“Are you serious?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

Jeonghan bites his lips, trying to remember in what mood Minghao had been in this morning. ‘Mildly annoyed’ had pretty much been a constant for weeks, as he had been trying to adjust to a third person in his space, a third person he didn’t hate but didn’t love, either, someone he still didn’t know how to approach despite having so much to ask, someone he desperately wanted to know but resented all the same.

“Alright,” Jeonghan says, defeated. “Give me a minute.”

Jeonghan is pretty sure the customer glowers at him as he disappears behind the red curtains separating the shop from the house. He stops at the bottom of the stairs, yelling Minghao’s name.

“Kitchen!” is the answer bellowing down the corridor. Minghao emerges a few seconds later, a steaming mug of tea in hand. His round glasses are slightly crooked, and his hair got longer, Jeonghan realizes; he looks a bit disheveled like this, a bit rumpled, as if he’d just gotten out of bed. And maybe he did, Jeonghan thinks; Minghao had started taking naps at odd times in the day, right upon his desk or curled up on the library couch, a book opened on his belly.

“What’s up?” he asks, righting his glasses and effectively snapping Jeonghan out of his thoughts.

“A customer wants to see you.”

“Why?”

“He says we sell crap and are frauds,” Jeonghan repeats, face carefully blank.

“Well, he’s kinda right,” Minghao says, blowing on his cup, seemingly unfazed.

“Yeah, I think he knows that. He’s really pissed about it too.”

“So what you’re saying is that I need to go in there and vehemently deny the truth?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Jeonghan nods, moving aside to let Minghao pass. The latter does so with a groan, shuffling down the corridor with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man.

“Minghao,” Jeonghan calls before he disappears behind the curtains.

“Yeah?”

“There’s something strange about the guy. I don’t really know what. But be careful.”

“I am the model of careful,” Minghao says as he lets the curtains fall closed behind him. Jeonghan stays in place, wondering if maybe he should follow but in his mind he’s already somewhere else, in a little library, nestled against a body he’s still learning to love.

  
  


**3** **.**

When Minghao steps into his shop, still clutching his mug, he is not prepared for what he sees. What he feels. The man stands in the dim light, boyish features under a mop of curly hair and he could be pretty, Minghao thinks, but there’s something unsettling behind his eyes, a darkness swirling there, a darkness there is no word for. Minghao steps closer, thorns pushing under his skin. It’s different than anything he’s felt before, different than Jeonghan’s warm shadows, than Joshua’s cold edges, than his own magic, pure and intimate.

Minghao stops where Jeonghan stood, gazing at the scowling man, looking for cracks to peer through but there’s nothing to see, nothing to feel except for that low fire burning, that darkness drawing strange fears from forgotten corners. And Minghao keeps staring at the lovely face, at the dark eyes, cold and restless like an ocean in a storm. The man stands almost too straight, chin defiantly raised, and those eyes, Minghao thinks, there’s something in those eyes he’d like to dissect, pull out in the open like the diagrams on the yellowed pages of his books.

“What is wrong with you?” he asks in a soft voice, words escaping him before he can stop them. The man starts, his scowl deepening, and a sinking feeling curls against Minghao’s spine.

“What the fuck is wrong with _you_? How dare you sell shit like that?” the man snarls, disturbing the crystals on the counter with a disdainful swipe of his hand, effectively reminding Minghao of where they are.

“They’re pretty,” Minghao deadpans, turning to anger to bury his unease.

“Pretty?” The customer repeats in disbelief. “You’re a hack.”

“ _I’m_ a hack?” Minghao points at himself, tea sloshing over the edge of his mug.

“Yeah, you’re a hack, and you should be ashamed, and I hope your shop burns down.”

Minghao is left speechless, the vitriol in the man’s voice far exceeding his choice of words. There’s a surge within the other, something pushing underneath his skin, straining towards Minghao who takes an involuntary step back, staring at the man’s clenched jaw, at the fists curled at his side. But his own anger is there, too, a forest fire burning away any concern, any worry he could have felt because really, _who does this guy thinks he is?_ Minghao steps forward, putting down his mug to gather the scattered crystals at the center of the counter and he steels himself when he looks up.

“Then you’re welcome to fuck off” he says, maintaining eye contact, voice as cold as he can make it. He’s good at this, he knows, walls of ice and a distance no one can bridge. The man must feel the change in him; his stance shifts, body tense like an animal poised for attack as they glower at each other.

“I’d rather burst into flames than stay one more minute in this dump anyway,” the man says, turning on his heels and striding to the door.

“A dump? Go fuck yourself!” Minghao yells, hurling a crystal at the man’s retreating back. The door closes with the jingle of the bell and the crystal, harmless, shatters in pieces as it hits the floor. Minghao remains behind the counter, fingernails digging into his palms, trying to ignore the trembling of his hands and the weight pushing against his ribs. The air itself feels nasty against his skin, as if the customer had left something behind, something old and corrupted, a phantom pouring darkness into the room.

Minghao swallows, exhaling a deep breath and willing the tension to leave with it. There’s a dark taste on his tongue, hands clammy at his sides and he skirts around the counter quietly, going to kneel by the shattered crystal to pick up the pieces. The stone reflects no light, bears no power, and Minghao knows the man was right, in a way. He is a hack, a self-made witch with no coven, no training, selling useless wares to the few who still believe there’s magic left in this world. The man had manged to rile him too easily, bringing back this old anger Minghao had thought extinguished, but the embers were still there to burn.

A sharp pain flares and Minghao hisses, dropping the crystal piece he’d picked up, blood on its edge. He presses at the unmarred skin around the cut, watching the blood swell, a drop slowly trickling down his finger and Minghao stares at the path it carves, following its course to the ground. His finger throbs dully, the pain subsiding quickly when he brings it to his mouth, the blood warm and coppery against his tongue. He sits back, a swelling in his chest feeling too much like tears and he’s tired, Minghao realizes, so tired; a simple cut and an irate man enough to push him over.

The little shop is quiet around him, the late afternoon slowly falling into night and he used to like these soft hours, neither day or night, neither light nor dark. A time for the in-between, for the magic, for the lonely and the forgotten but all that Minghao cannot feel it anymore, looking around his darkened shop. He pushes to his feet with a low exhale, cradling his wounded finger, leaving the shards to rest where they fell. It should have changed, he thinks, after all that had happened. This vast emptiness within him, it should have changed. But the past had had nothing to offer him except a bittersweet ache he didn’t know what to do with.

 _My grief is a constant companion,_ that last letter had said, the one he’d found all those months ago resting amongst forgotten books. _It is the traces of the ones I loved, remains that I will forever keep with me, and I cherish it just as I cherished them._ Minghao had long wondered how to find this peace, how to accept the loss and the sorrow and the loneliness. _There is no anger left in me._ There is only anger, left in him. Cold, quiet, buried deeper than the ground.

Minghao closes his eyes, breathing deeply, hand falling to his side. He can feel the blood welling up again on his wounded finger and he’d been careful, so careful not to let anything out, no outburst, no tears; a quiet nothingness he’d thought would bring him peace but he’d left everything to fester; a graveyard of regrets and loss, remains he couldn’t mourn, bones gathered but never buried. He opens his eyes on the quiet store, on the shelves, the useless trinkets and powerless herbs he gathered there and it wasn’t out of malice, it wasn’t out of greed; he just had to survive and at least the tarot readings had been genuine.

 _How dare you sell shit like that?_ the man had said, with his troubling eyes and spiteful voice.

“Yeah, well, fuck you!” Minghao yells, kicking a shelf and regretting it instantly, the throbbing pain in his finger mirrored by the one in his foot. He lets himself slump to the ground, sitting next to a book fallen from the shelf. Something about plants, and this one isn’t entirely hogwash, he remembers, a bitter smile gracing his lips. His gaze drifts to the shattered crystal near the door and he should really clean that up, he thinks, Jeonghan shouldn’t have to do it for him. But none of his limbs feels light enough to move and he remains there, the shelf digging into his back as the light of the day seeps out of the room, leaving him in shadows.

He’s not sure how long he stays there, listless and dazed, but the broken shards of pretty stone are still there on the ground and someone has to pick them up. Minghao forces to his feet, leaning against the shelf as he waits for his dizziness to subside. Tugging on his shirt for a makeshift pouch he picks up the shards one after the other, careful not to hurt himself again. It’s menial and grounding, his uneasiness receding slowly, until he feels like himself again. Calm, composed, hollow.

It’s in this state that he closes the shop for the night, having dropped the shards in the bin behind the counter, staring at their sad remains until they printed themselves on his retina. Minghao doesn’t dally once the lights are turned off; the tall shelves draw ghastly shadows, their darkness deeper than it used to be and Minghao is afraid that, were he to stare long enough, he would see them moving.

It’s quiet, behind the red curtain. Even the usual sounds of the house seem to have died down – no footsteps on creaking floorboards, no water in the pipes, no rumors growing from the street outside. Minghao looks down at his wounded finger, tip caked over in dried blood and he should really clean that, but instead it’s to the library that he wanders, knowing who he will find there. He has the sudden urge to not be alone, to hear voices and feel warmth, even if not entirely aimed at himself.

Both Jeonghan and Joshua look up when Minghao strolls in, scrambling to sit up away from each other so as to leave enough space for Minghao to fit in between them, Joshua’s book of the week tumbling to the floor. It’s a bit funny, how Joshua presses against the armrest of the couch, trying his best not to touch Minghao, who sprawls even further to heighten the other’s discomfort. It’s petty but satisfying all the same, even if Minghao can feel Jeonghan disapprovingly nudging him on his other side. Joshua and Minghao had never gotten over that initial mistrust, that initial awkwardness between them. Not yet, at least, and Minghao found a twisted sort of pleasure in needling Joshua, who acted so careful around him, as if Minghao was made of the finest glass Joshua was afraid to break.

“Thank you for your continuous support, Jeonghan.” Minghao says, deadpan, garnering himself a snort.

“That bad, uh?” Jeonghan asks, sitting cross-legged on the couch, body twisted to look at Minghao, who holds up his finger in the air.

“My finger’s wounded.”

“Did he do that to you?!”

“Yeah. He leaned right over the counter and bit my finger. Just fucking. Bit it right off. With pointy werewolf teeth.”

“Can you not,” Jeonghan says, shoving Minghao’s shoulder.

“Don’t ask stupid questions and I won’t.”

“See what I have to deal with?” Jeonghan addresses Joshua, leaning over Minghao to peer at him.

“You should clean that up,” the latter says, barely looking at Minghao’s finger, who immediately catches up on it.

“Does that make you queasy?” he says in a stupid voice, wiggling his bloodied finger under Joshua’s nose. “Does Sinistrad dislikes itty bitty cuts? Blood makes the great wizard sick to his tummy?”

“No, it does not, it’s just gross. And seriously, I still do not know who Sinistrad is. Can anyone tell me?”

“I don’t either,” Jeonghan helpfully supplies, bending to retrieve Joshua’s book. Something about movies you should watch before dying and Minghao peers as Jeonghan leafs through it, realizing that he didn’t see any of them, and wondering for a second what does it say about his tastes.

“Now that my suffering has been displayed and rightfully appreciated,” he says then, standing up from the couch, “I’ll go put something on this.”

He stops at the door, turning back to Joshua, his bloodied finger lifted. Joshua stares back, a frown gradually marring his features.

“Redrum,” Minghao says in a deformed voice, bending his finger, before slamming the door to avoid the book Joshua plucked from Jeonghan’s lap to throw at him.

“It’s not even the right finger!” Minghao hears Joshua yell through the door, snickering to himself as he goes down the corridor towards the bathroom. He stares long and hard in the mirror there, detailing the lines of his face, the bluish streak under his eyes betraying his lack of sleep, his dark hair, too long, too messy, framing the sharp angles of his face.

“You look like shit,” he tells his reflection, sighing as he opens the water to wash his finger underneath. The cut isn’t that deep, now that he can properly see it. Still he wraps a band aid around it, watching his work with an absent stare. Neat and tidy, concealing. Just like everything else, swept up and hidden behind closed doors and vacant smiles. Minghao sighs, gently slapping his cheeks, rubbing at his face to chase away his weariness. It’s okay, he tells himself. It has to be.

  
  


**4** **.**

Minghao’s still wondering how Jeonghan can even make his knocks sound puzzled when the latter steps into his office, an air of confusion on his face.

“The shithead is back again?”

“Is that a question?” Minghao says, resting his chin on his clasped hands, elbows on the notebook he was trying to decipher.

“No,” Jeonghan answers, fully stepping into the office. “He’s back and weirder than ever.”

“What does he want this time?”

Jeonghan shuffles, gaze trailing to the side before focusing on Minghao again, and his half-amused, half-confused air does nothing for Minghao’s nerves.

“Datura? He wants some datura.”

Minghao remains silent for a minute, rubbing at his sore eyes, hoping against all hope that maybe he misunderstood.

“Datura. He went ahead and asked you for datura, a completely normal thing to ask for?”

“Yup. He did that alright.”

“And did he specify why he is asking for witch cocaine?”

“Nope. That he did not.”

“Oh, goddamnit,” Minghao swears, sitting back against his chair, hands falling to his lap. “That motherfucker. He can’t be right in the head.”

“Should I just go tell him to fuck off?” Jeonghan asks hesitantly, clearly not enthralled at the prospect.

“I’ll do it myself,” Minghao says, getting up from his chair. “I’m not sure what he’s trying to pull but it can’t be good,” he finishes, decidedly trudging to the door.

Jeonghan follows to the bottom of the stairs, waving him off like an aggrieved mother sending their son to war, a fake sob in his chest. Minghao flips him off before disappearing through the curtains, Jeonghan’s laugh following him to the shop.

The man looks worse, somehow, almost haggard, his nest of hair sticking up every which way, deep bruises under his eyes. The uneasy feeling is still there, Minghao’s skin crawling as he stares at the dark eyes, but there’s something new, amidst the swirling dark; a despair, a misery that seals the breath in Minghao’s lungs, something raw and agonizing that disturbs him as much as the phantoms he feels strumming under the man’s skin. The scalding words Minghao had prepared on his way down die on his lips as he takes a step forward, staring at the man’s face, at the warring he finds there.

“Are you okay?”

“Do you have datura or not?”

“I’m a hack who only sells useless crap, you should know that,” Minghao says, crossing his arms over his chest. But there’s no bite in his voice, words much softer than he intended, and he can see the man hesitates, a furrow in his brow he smooths over with obvious effort.

“I need it, okay?” the man says, almost pleading.

 _He’s trying not to antagonize me,_ Minghao realizes with amusement as he stares at this strange, eerie man, full of a chilling darkness he struggles to contain.

“And I don’t have it,” Minghao says softly. Despite his posturing the man looks fragile, on the brink of collapse, and Minghao’s voice falls to a whisper as he continues. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t sell it to you.”

“I know what I’m doing,” the man says, fists curled at his sides but his hands are shaking.

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Minghao answers, an eyebrow raised, and the man opens his mouth, a flash of fury in his eyes. But then, nothing comes out. His mouth closes, a look of surprise crossing his features, and before Minghao can even react, he folds like reeds under the wind. His head smacks against the counter on his way down with a dull thud that has Minghao wince even as he rushes to the man’s side, arriving too late to prevent any kind of damage. The man just lays there, in a lump on the floor, eyes closed. Minghao checks his pulse and it’s steady enough, eyes shuddering behind his eyelids.

Minghao loops the man’s arm around his own shoulders just as Jeonghan’s pokes his head through the curtains, eyes widening at the scene.

“What the heck happened? Is he dead? Did you kill him?”

“I didn’t kill him,” Minghao says, struggling to his feet. The guy is taller than him, heavier, too, and Minghao isn’t exactly a paragon of physical fitness these days.

“Oh god, I know nothing about hiding bodies. Should I get Joshua? He’s the one with murder experience,” Jeonghan still prattles on, the rest of him following his head through the curtain.

“Look, you idiot,” Minghao sighs, looking up at Jeonghan. “He’s not dead, he just collapsed.”

“Oh. Collapsed because he’s dying?”

“He’s not dying! At least I hope so,” Minghao adds with a concerned glance towards the man he’s trying to lug towards the back. He’s still breathing, if anything. “Now can you fucking help me? He’s goddamn heavy.”

Somehow, it had been easier to bring Minghao’s heavy furniture up to his room than carting the guy. None of them really know where to put their hands, and the weight is unevenly distributed, resulting in a struggle up the stairs punctuated by half-screamed invective that have Joshua peek out of the library.

“What the hell – is he dead?”

Minghao stops mid-step, tilting his head back to yell at the ceiling.

“Why do you two always go straight to murder? What’s wrong with you? He just fucking collapsed okay!”

“Why is he so mad?” Joshua asks Jeonghan, ignoring Minghao’s outburst. Jeonghan shrugs, a quite impressive feat to achieve considering the armful of unconscious biped he’s lugging up the staircase.

“Do you guys need help?” Joshua ventures, closing the library door behind him.

“Oh, I don’t know, do we?” Minghao answers in a biting tone that has Joshua roll his eyes.

With Joshua joining them they manage to reach Minghao’s room, where they lay the man out on the bed carefully, dark hair spilling over white pillows. His dreadful eyes closed he looks young, Minghao realizes, much too young for the exhaustion in his face, for the weight under which he caved. Carefully, Minghao brushes back strands from his brow, lets his fingers fall to the pulse at his neck. But he can feel something else, there, too; a swell, pushing, thrumming under the skin. Much too warm, and Minghao retracts his fingers, a line of worry creasing his brow.

“Can you feel it?” he asks in a soft voice, and watches Jeonghan hover next to him, watches his hand flit over the man’s fingers, tangling them in his own.

“Something’s wrong,” Jeonghan says, and for the first time Minghao notices how solemn they all became, Joshua standing at the foot of the bed, watching over them like a priest presiding at an altar, his dark eyes staring at the slumbering man.

“Something’s very wrong,” Jeonghan repeats, fingers tracing a path to the man’s wrist. “I can’t tell what it is. But it feels… it feels vile. Twisted.”

“Is he dreaming?”

Jeonghan tilts his head, eyes losing focus as his fingers rest over the vein beating at the inside of the man’s wrist.

“He is.”

“Could you see what about?”

“I could. I’m not sure I want to.”

Minghao nods, gaze flitting back to the slumbering man. He looks like a recumbent, Minghao thinks, skin too pale, body stiff, and the altar they worship at turns into a sepulcher.

“It feels familiar, Jeonghan, doesn’t it?” Joshua asks, voice flat, eyes still trained on the man’s face. They both stare at him and he looks up, something grave in his eyes sowing unease in Minghao’s guts. Jeonghan hesitates, hand leaving the man’s skin as he takes a step back, hugging his arms to himself.

“It does, but it’s all wrong. Perverted.”

“What? What’s familiar?” Minghao asks, feeling like he’s missing something.

“Don’t you sense it too?” Jeonghan asks, extending his hand to him. Minghao takes it, closing his eyes to focus better and Jeonghan’s right. If he looks he can feel it, something that calls out to him, something old and dark, something slightly evil, something smelling of rain and earth.

“The shadows,” he says, opening his eyes, and Joshua nods, hands curling at his side, face taut. “But that can’t be, he doesn’t have any with him, we would have noticed right away.”

“That’s what feels so wrong,” Jeonghan answers, still gripping Minghao’s hand. “I’ll do it,” he adds, jaw tight. “I’ll go into his dreams.”

“Are you sure?” Minghao asks after a pause. Jeonghan nods, lifting his eyes to Joshua, finding there the reassurance he needs.

“Thank you,” Minghao says, squeezing his hand softly.

Having already done so once, the preparations are quicker, this time. They wait until the last of the light has completely disappeared, plunging the room in the dark of night. Minghao lights a candle at each corner of the room, next to the mounds of salt he put there hours ago. As Jeonghan lies down next to the man, Minghao places lighted censers full of lavender by their heads, waiting until the smell permeates the room. Under his breath he murmurs words of power, the words that will keep them asleep, and, hopefully, safe. Joshua passes him the chamomile and valerian blooms Minghao places at the foot of the bed and it’s so much like adorning a tomb, two recumbent lying there, the perfect image of what there were in life.

 _But they’re not dead_ , Minghao thinks, _not yet, and you won’t have to do this, not this time._ Minghao sighs, shaking his head to get these morbid thoughts out of his mind and he surveys his handiwork before grabbing the last bloom, white heather he will thread in his own hair. He glances at Jeonghan, at his hand at the center of the bed, linked with the stranger’s own. He shouldn’t leave him alone for too long. A last glance at Joshua, standing at the foot of the bed, tells him everything’s ready. Minghao kneels at Jeonghan’s side, then, parting his lips on a soft chant. Closing his eyes he looks for a light he knows well, for the sense of something familiar and well-loved; for Jeonghan himself. When he finds him, everything turns black.

_He opens his eyes and still he sees nothing. It’s terribly dark, wherever he is. Darker than black, and Minghao takes a careful step on a floor he cannot see. The darkness presses against him, slithers between his ribs, squeezes his lungs and wrings his heart. There is nothing to see, nothing to hear nor to feel yet he is scared, dreadfully so, a primal fear sinking claws deep in his belly. He calls but his voice dies in his throat, when he tries to run his knees buckle. There is nothing but the darkness, and a crushing loneliness. And then, he hears it. Soft, barely there. Choked sobs, from somewhere in that liquid darkness. Minghao crawls on all four towards the sound, and it seems like half an eternity before he reaches it, an island of grey light where a child crouches, cheeks streaked with tears._

“ _Who are you?” Minghao asks, but he doesn’t need an answer. When the child lifts his eyes on him, he recognizes them instantly. But the swirling darkness he saw in their depths isn’t here anymore; and Minghao knows why – it’s all around them, dismal, smothering. The child gasps, grabs at him with frantic hands and it hurts where his fingers bury into his flesh; a child shouldn’t have this much strength. There’s madness in him, in his eyes, in the turn of his mouth and Minghao’s fear coils darkly against his spine._

“ _It’s devouring me, take it out, take it out of me, it’s so hungry, I can’t hold it in any longer.”_

“ _What are you talking about?” Minghao grabs at the child who stares at him with wide eyes, releasing his hold on Minghao’s_ _arms_ _to point at the darkness beyond him._

“ _This,” the child says, “_ _Don’t you_ _see it?”_

 _Minghao turns to look, slowly, but there is nothing. When he gazes back_ _to the child_ _, he’s looking at an empty space._

“ _Where did you go?” he cries,_ _but_ _no one answers._ _Yet_ _he_ _i_ _s not quite alone;_ _h_ _e can feel it,_ _h_ _e can hear it. A slithering sound, like a colossal body creeping along the ground. Minghao stares into the darkness, his instincts commanding him to flee yet he is rooted in place, watching, waiting. And then, he sees it. A dark shape, darker than the obscurity surrounding all yet molded by it, slithering towards him. Minghao lifts his eyes on its monstrous shape, a serpentine head balancing far above the ground. The smell hits him then, rot and putrefaction, decay and death._

_He should move, he knows. He should run, hide in the dark until it is gone, yet he stays rooted in place, watching the head split in two, a gaping mouth darker than dark pouncing on him._

_And then, there’s a scream. His, maybe, and he’s ripped out of his skin._

He’s on the floor and Joshua’s panting above him, a hand on his heart, another on his brow. He’s speaking in a tongue Minghao doesn’t recognize, grating sounds dipping into low growls.

“What–” Minghao interrupts himself, his voice hoarse, raw in his throat. He’s thirsty, incredibly so, and it’s only when he tries to move that Joshua’s eyes snap open, the strange words dying on his lips.

“You’re back!”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” Minghao says, coughing as he sits up with Joshua’s help. He glances at the bed, where Jeonghan lays awake, reclining on pillows, face pale and sweat on his brow. Beside him the man is still slumbering and an uneasy feeling spreads like ink in Minghao’s chest – the kid in the dream, stuck with a monster made of death and darkness, it was him.

“What happened?” Minghao asks the room, gaining a weak smile from Jeonghan, who gestures at Joshua for an answer.

“I’m not sure. Jeonghan was pulled too deep, and you followed. I managed to wake him almost immediately, and it should have woken you, too, but it did not. Something was holding you back.”

“He was,” Minghao says, pointing at the sleeping man. “And then he wasn’t, and there was this beast instead. And I think… I think it would have really killed me, if you hadn’t. Woken me up somehow.”

Joshua nods, glancing at the sleeping man.

“Do you remember anything else?” he asks Minghao, gaze still fixed on the stranger.

“He said he couldn’t hold it in any longer. That it was devouring him.”

“What was?”

“I don’t know. The beast. It’s made of shadows, I think, but it’s… vile. Corrupted. Definitely evil.”

Joshua nods, wringing his hands, and it dawns on Minghao then, that none of them know what to do. He stares at the man and he knows how deceitful his slumbering face is, he knows which hell the trudges in, the fear and the loneliness and the shadows dodging his heels.

“We need to wake him,” Minghao says, voice soft, and the stranger looks young, so young.

“I tried. I couldn’t reach anything in him,” Joshua answers, looking down at his hands.

“He’s hiding. Hiding from the monster. I need to go back in and find him.”

Joshua and Jeonghan exchange a glance, something grave where unspoken thoughts flow. And they nod, Minghao looking towards the sleeping man, detailing the lines of his face, the clench of his jaw, the shift of his eyes under his closed eyelids. He knows his dreams, now, he knows the fear, the sorrow, the despair. And _I won’t desert you_ , he tells him then. _I will find you, and I will pull you out of this hellish place._

Minghao climbs to his feet, dismissing Joshua’s hands who fly to steady him. He’s okay. He’s fine. He’s not the one in need of help.

“I need all the fucking valerian I can find,” he says, trudging through the door. No one stops him.

  
  


**5.**

Jeonghan weaves a crown of mallows and sets it upon the man’s brow. Minghao watches from the threshold, the pale purple of the flowers striking against the dark of the man’s hair. On the other side of the bed, Joshua stands, fingers locked in front of his chest in a complicated gesture and he’s chanting under his breath in that strange, guttural tongue of his. He stands like this for hours each day, each night, too, and Minghao wonders when he sleeps. He can feel the magic seeping out of him, warm tendrils curling over the body on the bed, keeping it safe, he hopes, and Minghao turns away to step back into his office.

He had found nothing, on what the shadow serpent might be. He had found nothing that would allow him to step into the man’s dream and bring him back unharmed. And so, he had improvised, his lack of knowledge never so keenly felt. Remnants of wildflowers and dried herbs dust his desktop, two small pouches of white linen resting there on an opened book. Minghao had poured long and hard over the amulets, opting for simplicity as he had crammed angelica roots in the smallest white pouches he had before tying them closed with a leather string he could hang from his neck. Inside one of the bags, amongst the dried roots, he had put a lock of his own hair. In the other, the one he could feel resting against his chest, was a strand of the man’s own.

When he goes back to his bedroom, Joshua is alone. Eyes closed, perfectly still, he keeps chanting. The configuration of his hands has changed, and the magic as well. It’s colder, now, sharper, and Minghao fears what this might mean. He steps in quietly, kneeling by the side of the bed to peer at the stranger’s face. He’s almost too familiar, now; the way his hair fall upon his brow, the way his lips parts on slow breaths, the way his eyes shift behind his eyelids – yet he still has no name. Minghao shifts, straightening up to sit on the chair they brought near the bed and this looks too much like a sickroom, Minghao thinks, them taking turns watching over a dying man.

The chair creaks under his weight and Joshua’s eyes snap open to land on Minghao, the chant dwindling to an end.

“Sorry,” Minghao says, sincere for once. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s okay,” Joshua says, rubbing his hands together. “I need a break anyway.”

“What are you doing, exactly? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Joshua smiles, taking a seat on the stool they dragged from Minghao’s office.

“It’s for protection, mostly. Guidance too. To reach him wherever he is and show him the way. Keep him alive.”

Minghao nods, suddenly aware of the strangeness of them being alone together. It happens so rarely, Jeonghan always there somehow, a buffer through which they can communicate. Minghao’s grateful for it; he still doesn’t know how to apprehend Joshua, how to accept him, resentment and mistrust warring with his longing for kinship, for approval, for family. For knowledge, too, and thus he asks another question, looking at the sleeping man rather than at Joshua.

“Which language is it?”

Minghao half expects Joshua to refuse to answer, but something’s building between them in this quiet room, a fragile peace no one dares to shatter. And so, Joshua tells him.

“The language of magic. Of the yew tree and the shadows. Did you lose it, too?”

Minghao nods, glancing towards Joshua who’s looking at him, a faraway look in his troubling eyes.

“I could teach you,” he says. “If you would let me.”

Minghao remembers what his answer had been, the first time a similar offer had been made. _I do not want it. Not from you. You’re the one who brought the end._ He knows, too, that Joshua must remember. That this had cemented the rift growing between them, that awkward in-between they found themselves in, tentative friendship and rueful animosity. Minghao looks at Joshua, at his intensely beautiful traits, at his sad eyes, too old, much too old for such a face.

“Okay,” he says, voice careful, and he doesn’t miss the way Joshua’s eyes widen in surprise. “If I get out of this, I’ll let you teach me.”

“You will get out of this,” Joshua tells him, and strangely, Minghao believes it. They smile at each other, something small and hesitant but there nonetheless. Minghao sighs, gazing down at the sleeping man.

“Can you remind me why I’m doing this again?”

“I seriously don’t know,” Joshua says, amused. “If I didn’t know you I’d say altruism, but…”

“Yeah,” Minghao laughs, “Not my forte.”

“You can still back off. No one will judge you.”

“I will,” Minghao says, and Joshua nods in understanding. “I think it’s time,” Minghao continues, “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

Joshua doesn’t dispute it. Doesn’t ask if he’s sure, if he doesn’t need more time, if they should go over everything once again. He simply nods, getting up from his stool.

“I’ll go get Jeonghan,” he says, walking to the door. But he stops on the threshold, turning back to look at Minghao who stares at him questioningly.

“I wanted to… I wanted to thank you.”

“For what?” Minghao asks, genuinely puzzled. He did nothing, except maybe make Joshua’s life harder than it needed to be.

“For letting me stay. Despite everything.”

Minghao hadn’t expected that. Having Joshua leave was not something he had ever considered. Somehow the man was already part of the house. Part of Jeonghan. Part of himself, too.

“It’s fine. Having you stay was never an issue. Jeonghan loves you. And I love him like a brother. I hate you like one, too.”

“You do know I killed my sibling, right?”, Joshua asks, impassive. If Minghao had something to throw at him, he would have right there and then.

“Shut up, it’s still a cool line,” he says instead, trying to quell the smile he feels growing on his lips.

Joshua laughs, going through the door and Minghao listens to his footsteps down the corridor, to his voice softly calling for Jeonghan. And it’s true, he realizes then. The uneasiness, the dislike he feels for Joshua is merely skin deep. There’s something else underneath, something raw and primal that had recognized Joshua as _mine_ , _my people, my kin._ His gaze drifts to the man on the bed and he wonders, not for the first time, who this man will turn out to be, if there’s any meaning in his desperate attempt at saving him other than the deep compassion he feels, other than this frantic need not to lose anyone else, not even a stranger, no matter how hostile he might have been.

His thoughts are interrupted by Joshua’s return, Jeonghan on his heels. He was asleep, Minghao can tell, face rumpled and hair disheveled. A kind of softness grows in his chest at the sight, a deep affection he always takes care to hide well.

“I hear we’re riding at dawn?”

“Yeah,” Minghao says, laughing, and it’s strange how serene he feels in the face of the unknown. “I’m ready to try if you are.”

“I am,” Jeonghan nods, every last trace of drowsiness erased from his features. It’s always a mistake people make, thinking Jeonghan soft. There’s fire under his skin, an iron will no one can bend; not even death, Minghao thinks, glancing at Joshua. He knows it will be fine, then, whatever happens. If he loses himself, they will find him.

As Joshua takes up the tasks that used to be Minghao’s own – the candles and the salt, the lavender censers, the valerian and the chamomile – Minghao takes his place upon the bed.

“Remember that I won’t be in here with you,” Jeonghan is saying, “I will let you find him through me, but I won’t be dreaming. You’ll be alone.”

“I know,” Minghao says as Jeonghan climbs on the bed with him, sitting cross-legged at Minghao’s hip. He takes his hand in his, the man’s in the other, and exhales slowly as he closes his eyes.

“Everyone’s ready?”

There’s a collective assent, Joshua’s voice rising in that strange chant again, and Minghao closes his eyes.

“Now sleep,” Jeonghan says, and it’s the last thing Minghao hears.

_He opens his eyes on the same liquid darkness, on the same absolute nothing. The first thing he does is check if the amulets are there around his neck, and he squeezes the one holding the man’s locks in his fist, reassured to find it there against his chest. “Where are you?” he asks the void, but there is no answer and so he starts walking, blindly through the dark. The fear is there, too, filling his lungs with lead and Minghao takes one careful step after another, listening, listening for nothing. He looks for the sobs and the grey light, wary of the beast he knows prowls this black emptiness. Still he hears nothing, sees nothing, and so he closes his eyes, clutching the amulet within his hand, asking it, asking the magic within him and the one lent to him to show him the way. And then, it does._

_There’s a man sleeping at his feet when he opens his eyes. He knows him, knows the lines of his face, knows the way his eyelashes draw shadows upon his cheekbones. He’s crowned in mallows, pale purple against the dark of his messy hair and Minghao kneels beside him, removing the second amulet from his own neck. He lays it upon the man’s chest, small words of power escaping his lips. A prayer, almost, although he knows there is no one to listen, no one but the devouring dark._

_He takes the man’s hand in his and it is cold, cold as death, Minghao linking their fingers, willing his warmth, his magic to flow within the other. He does not know how long they remain this way, hand in hand, tangled within the other. It seems like half an eternity before there’s a soft sigh, an itch in the man’s breath and Minghao watches him with wide eyes, watches him come back to life. The dark eyes open slowly, gazing at Minghao’s face, detailing each of his features as Minghao remains silent, breath stuck in his lungs._

“ _I know you,” the man says, and his voice is soft, softer than Minghao ever heard him speak._

“ _You do. I came to find you. To bring you back.”_

“ _Can you?”_

“ _What is your name?”_

“ _Would it help if you knew it?”_

“ _Everything helps.”_

“ _Wonwoo,” the man says, closing his eyes as if he had exhausted his strength._

“ _I’m Minghao.”_

_Wonwoo nods, eyes still closed, and Minghao fears he’s slipping again, the darkness around them clinging to him, pulling him down, down to unreachable depths._

“ _You have to wake up,” Minghao says, lightly shaking Wonwoo by the shoulder. “You have to wake up and follow me.”_

“ _Why?”_

“ _You know why.”_

“ _I’m tired. So tired. I want to close my eyes. I want to rest.”_

“ _Please,” Minghao says, nervously gazing above his shoulder, looking for a shadow darker than dark, straining for the sound of a slither upon the ground. But there is no depths to the darkness that engulfs them; nothing to hear, nothing to see, just him and a half-dead body._

“ _I don’t want to fight anymore,” Wonwoo is saying, and when Minghao stares back at him he looks so pale, already sinking under his fingertips, down, down a shadowy river he cannot follow._

“ _You should leave,” Wonwoo says in this muted voice Minghao’s learning to hate. “You should leave while you still can.”_

“ _Hold on to this,” Minghao says, shoving into Wonwoo’s cold hand the second amulet, the one with his own hair nestled inside, the one that should protect him, that should hide him, that should show him the way._

“ _What is_ _it_ _for?” Wonwoo asks, lifting his head to gaze at it._

“ _It will let you find me. Find a way out, if you want it.”_

“ _So you’re not just a hack?”_

_There’s a hint of teasing in that flat voice, something that has Minghao smile and he shakes his head, nudging Wonwoo’s shoulder._

“ _Now’s not the time to be a smartass.”_

“ _I don’t know if there will be any other time,” Wonwoo says, and it’s then that Minghao feels it. A cold, clammy sensation creeping_ _down_ _his skin, and that sound, that abhorred sound of a massive body dragging its distorted shape upon the ground._

“ _No,” Minghao whispers, hands grabbing at Wonwoo’s wrist. “Please, not now.”_

_Rot and putrefaction, decay and death. Minghao gags as the smell hits him, heralding the arrival of the beast. Of the shadow. And Wonwoo, Wonwoo under his fingers, too pale and too light, not enough life in him to make a fire and he’s sinking, slipping under Minghao’s fingers, swallowed by a ground soft as miry clay. Alone once more in that obscurity where nothing strives, Minghao stares at the moving dark, at the inevitable end from which he knows there is no escape, and this is what it is, he thinks, a slithering death, a dark nothingness, old as life itself._

_He tugs on the amulet_ _around_ _his neck, clutching it in his hand, and he knows how futile it is, its power much too weak, much too quaint against such evil. Yet it is all he has, and he calls upon the magic in his blood, that strange power bestowed upon him by a heritage he never could understand, hidden, destroyed, gone. “Save me,” he asks, and he closes his eyes on the encroaching dark, the amulet pulsing of a slow heartbeat against his palm. It’s then, that he hears it. A voice he knows well, a guttural chant which words escape him._

_Minghao opens his hands, a gesture of invitation for that occult magic he calls within himself. He feels its sharp, cold edges nesting underneath his skin, pulling at him, at each fiber of his being, painfully, almost, but what suffers is still alive and so he lets it, lets it pull himself apart, tearing him towards the ground, towards the soft, cool earth there, burying him where another body laid._

Minghao wakes like a drown man, breath heaving, expunging from his body the dark, the cold, the rot and the sharp magic that brought him out; a magic he still feels hanging in the air, riding every strange words from Joshua’s mouth, and Minghao holds onto it a little longer, until the chant dwindles, until there’s a warm embrace around him, fierce and smothering, one he returns with equal relief.

“I almost lost you,” Jeonghan says, “I could feel you less and less, and instead there was this… thing. It felt foul, it felt like I was eating a corpse.”

Minghao nods, disentangling himself from Jeonghan.

“It’s the thing. The shadow. It was there again, and Wonwoo disappeared, and then you brought me back.”

“So his name is Wonwoo,” Joshua says. “Did you give him the amulet?” he asks, taking a seat on the stool. He looks exhausted, Minghao realizes, face hollow and drained, eyes dimmed. As if he’d been with him, there in the dream, and Minghao wonders how much the man had to expand to find him there, to bring him back.

“I did. But I couldn’t wake him. He didn’t want to. He said he wanted to rest, that he didn’t want to fight anymore.”

Joshua nods, thoughtful, eyes trained on the sleeping man and finally, Minghao turns to look at him, too, a weight nestling against his ribs. The mallows have wilted upon his brow, the withered petals drawing purple shadows in his silky hair. Minghao picks one carefully, the flower limp in his palm. Wonwoo looks peaceful, his face a perfect mask and Minghao inches closer, tentatively grabbing his hand; the skin is warm, soft under his touch and an inexplicable sorrow unfurls in his chest.

“He’s giving up,” he says. “When he found us, it was already too late.”

They fall silent, gazing at the stranger upon the bed, at his lovely face, at the wilted petals in his hair.

“You gave him a way,” Joshua says softly, “if he desires so, he will follow.”

  
  


**6** **.**

Joshua’s language doesn’t have neither rules nor grammar. It’s like speaking in tongues, Joshua tells Minghao as they stand face to face in the library, the bright light of early morning spilling through the window. You let the words pass through you, but you don’t control them. They will transcribe your will into power.

“But how do I find them?” Minghao asks, “Where do they come from?”

“They’re already within you,” Joshua answers, “they were given to you a long time ago.”

Minghao barely retains a scoff, rocking on his feet as his gaze falls from Joshua to the row of books behind him.

“Given to me? By who?”

“By the ones who made you. The ones who came before you. By the tree and the shadows and the earth.”

Minghao chews the inside of his cheek, all his dismissive attitude dissipating at the seriousness of Joshua’s tone and he looks back at him, at his steady gaze, at the taut lines of his face. Minghao had asked Joshua to follow up on his offer to teach him as his helplessness had grown heavy, almost too heavy to bear. They’d relay themselves at Wonwoo’s bedside but there was no change to witness, the pale face yet too still under their stares despite the flowers weaved in the dark hair, despite the amulet clutched in Minghao’s hand, despite the chants and the calls and the hopes.

“You must give up control,” Joshua continues, snapping Minghao out of his thoughts. “You must accept what is, accept what you are, let what’s buried inside you come back to life.”

“How do I do that?” Minghao asks with a pained smile, already knowing Joshua has no real answer to give him.

“You try,” he says, “you give yourself over.”

Joshua takes a step forward and another, until he’s standing in front of Minghao, closer than he’s ever been. There’s hesitation in his face as he opens his hands, offering them up for Minghao to take and long seconds tick by before Minghao complies, fitting his palms against Joshua’s and he’d expected his hands to be cold but they’re warm, a warmth much too familiar and Minghao leans in unwittingly.

“Close your eyes, try to find me, and when you do, follow.”

Minghao nods, closing his eyes on Joshua’s earnest face, trying to quell the part of him that is screaming to let go, that this is not a friend, not a brother, that there is no trust to give nor to find. Instead he focuses on the warmth against his palms, focuses on the low fire he feels traveling up his arms, focuses on what he recognizes as Joshua’s magic flowing into him and he lets it, lets him, finds him inside himself and follows, to each dark corner and forgotten hallways. When a low chant rises it barely registers, Joshua’s voice echoing inside Minghao’s head where words take form, words he never knew before yet they’re intensely familiar and he listens to their raspy sounds, swallows their shape and they taste dark on his tongue but he likes it, he likes them, and he follows Joshua’s voice until a second one threads into it, a second one Minghao recognizes as his own.

And the words still mean nothing, yet he lets them flow out of him and he knows what they speak of; yearning and loneliness and a desire for forgiveness, a desire to be known and accepted and wanted and something falters inside him, something hidden and painful that the chants brings out in the open and the vulnerability is too much – Minghao can feel his knees buckle out in the real world where his body still stands but there’s someone to hold him, someone who doesn’t let go and Minghao clings to him, clings to this strange feeling of light abandon, of surrender.

He closes his eyes tighter, flickers of light dancing on the back of his eyelids and he follows the voice deeper, deeper still, to the rawest parts of his mind, and he himself doesn’t know what lays there underneath the dust and rubble, whose bones they’ll find; his own, maybe, a child’s coffin he’d buried deeper than the ground, a loss he had never wished to face. Yet the words brings him down, down in this stifling darkness and he lets them; there’s more to find down here, an older kind of magic smelling of rain and earth, roots he knows where they would lead were he to follow.

And there, he drowns. In the words and the smell, the dark and the bones; his lungs fill yet he still breathes, his body sinks yet there is a light down there, where a voice calls his name. Minghao comes to then, with a ragged breath and an ache in his chest.

“What the fuck happened?”

“You followed,” Joshua says, and it registers that they’re both on the ground, Joshua kneeling next to Minghao’s crumpled form, holding him steady. And Minghao doesn’t want to leave his warmth, he realizes, doesn’t want to shrug off his touch; instead he tests it out, leaning more of his weight against Joshua who doesn’t let go, shifting to accommodate him, sitting on the floor an arm around his shoulders.

“My mum never told me about the magic.”

Joshua’s gaze falls on him but Minghao looks away, to the shelves full of worn books, to the crumpled couch and he finds comfort in their familiarity, in the images floating there; of Jeonghan, of Joshua, of himself.

“I could feel it but I never knew what it was. I think she hoped it would disappear in time, if she never did anything about it. I found out everything after she died, everything about the coven, about the magic I would find in the earth, in the plants, in myself.”

“How old were you?”

“About fifteen? It doesn’t really matter.”

“What happened?”

“I was bounced around houses and families until I was old enough, and then I worked, and I found this place, and I made it my home.”

“You learned everything alone.”

“I did. It wasn’t all bad. You make it sound like it was.”

“I just… I don’t know what it would have been like. I grew up with magic, and with a family to teach me.”

“For all the good it did you,” Minghao points out, but there’s no bite in his tone and Joshua laughs, something brief that has Minghao turn back to him and there’s a spark of awkwardness between them, a sudden unease at this unfamiliar openness. Minghao turns away, bashful, and Joshua retreats his touch, the loss immediately felt.

“I guess we got the worst of both worlds,” Joshua says as an after-thought and Minghao smiles, turning back to him but Joshua doesn’t catch his gaze, looking down at his own hands instead. “Can I ask how your mother – she must have been young,” he says, voice almost too quiet to hear and Minghao would have considered the question inappropriate a mere hours ago, but something had happened here between them, in the cramped library, something had opened within him that called for honesty.

“She just… Wasted away. I don’t know. I think it was all too much. Me, our heritage; maybe she knew what had happened to the coven, knew we were ones of the only few left, knew we had lost our war. I don’t think she had ever really wanted to birth me. She didn’t know what to do with me, with what was inside me. She just… she was tired.”

Joshua nods as if he understands and maybe he does, Minghao thinks, looking at him. He feels new, now that the mistrust, the hostility has receded, and maybe Minghao sees him for what he really is for the first time; a little lost, a little sad, a little lonely. _He’s like me,_ Minghao thinks, and a wave of compassion pushes against his ribs. For Joshua, but for himself, too, and maybe he could stand to be a little kinder, a little softer.

They stay seated on the library floor until the light starts to dim, shoulder to shoulder, a soft kind of exhaustion falling over Minghao and he closes his eyes as Joshua intones a low chant. And he knows it, now, he can feel the meaning behind the strange words – remorse, yearning, hope. Minghao lets himself find comfort in it, in _him_ , and maybe today was made for being vulnerable, for being soft; maybe it’s okay to rest, once in a while. A light rain starts to fall and the platter of the drops threads in Joshua’s voice, softening the hard edges of the words.

It’s like this that Jeonghan finds them, both lulling against each other, Minghao half asleep in Joshua’s lap.

“I’m sorry,” he says, both Minghao and Joshua straightening at the intrusion. “But I think it’s getting worse. I can’t feel him anymore.”

Minghao exchanges a glance with Joshua, the soft peace that had befallen him shattering at Jeonghan’s words. He stands up, Joshua grabbing his arm as he sways dizzily, and they both follow Jeonghan out the door to the bedroom, where Wonwoo lays.

If at all possible Minghao would think Wonwoo is even paler, all color drained from his face, lips of a bluish tint and cheeks sunken. He draws nearer, steps faltering, looking up at Jeonghan near the door.

“Did something happen?”

“No,” Jeonghan shakes his hands, wringing his hands. “He just slipped from my grasp. I could feel him, and then I could not.”

“Did you feel the beast?”

“No. Suddenly there just was nothing.”

Minghao looks back down, brings his fingers to Wonwoo’s neck; his pulse is still there under the clammy skin, beating faintly. There’s fresh flowers in his hair, a crown of mallows Minghao can picture Jeonghan weaving, sitting at the edge of the bed, deft fingers threading the flowers together.

“Is he dying?” Minghao asks to no one in particular. “Did he give up completely?”

There’s a soft touch upon his arm and Minghao looks up at Joshua, lines of worry in his face he doesn’t remember ever seeing but the soft smile he gives is hopeful.

“Do you want to try? The old magic.”

“I don’t – I don’t know if I can? I don’t know enough yet.”

“It’s not about knowledge, sometimes,” Joshua tells him in earnest, “just feelings and instinct.”

Minghao nods, biting his lips as he looks down at the dying man resting upon his bed, wasting away, wasting away and he remembers another room, another pale face framed in dark hair for whom there was nothing he could do.

“Okay,” he says firmly, resolve growing. “Okay, let’s try.”

Joshua smiles, relief evident on his handsome face and he nods, clasping Minghao on the arm.

“The magic will be stronger, with both of us.”

Again they light the candles, again valerian and chamomile blooms find their place at the foot of the bed, again the smell of lavender permeates the air. Minghao threads white heather in his own hair, watching as Joshua does the same and they kneel on each side of the bed, clasping each of Wonwoo’s hands in their own. Minghao hold the amulet in his free hand, Joshua reaching across the bed to hold onto him. The circle is closed, and Minghao peers at Jeonghan one last time before closing his eyes. The latter offers a reassuring nod – should anything turn awry, he’ll be there to stop it.

Minghao closes his eyes as the first word breaks from Joshua’s lips. He listens, first, getting a sense of the chant – something pleading, something sad yet hopeful, something comforting, too, and Minghao feels a strength rise from the depths of him, _it’s not about knowledge_ , and so he lets it, lets it push against his ribs, coil in his lungs, _just feelings and instinct_ , and he parts his lips, pouring all of his hopes, all of his desires into the words that leave his throat, joining in with Joshua’s own. There’s an intake of breath on his right, Jeonghan, surely, and Minghao closes his eyes tighter, gripping Wonwoo’s cold hand more firmly, feeling Joshua’s warm fingers in his own, the amulet against his palm.

For the first time in ages, the confidence Minghao feels doesn’t seem feigned. It will work. It has to.

  
  


**7** **.**

 _There’s a shift, somewhere in the darkness. Wonwoo feels it against his skin, in his bones, in the last shreds of his shattered mind. It’s like a soft wind, smelling of rain and earth and he struggles to open his_ _eyes against the darkness. He’s been waiting, waiting for the beast to find him, to give him an end, finally, an out from this war he_ _never wanted to wage_ _. But the shadow likes to play, likes to draw things out, and it had left him there, perfectly alone in this void it had created, this void that had already swallowed so much of him._

 _There’s something in his hand and when he looks it’s a small white bag, warm against his palm._ _Wonwoo_ _seems to remember, then, the smell of lavender and a sharp voice,_ hold on to this, _hands upon him, a plea,_ please, not now, _but there is no face, no name to find in his memories._ _Yet he remembers the voice_ _and_ _he repeats the words to himself, again and again while he still can;_ _he knows this will be devoured, too, slowly by the encroaching dark, just as everything else had been._

 _B_ _ut he has a small white bag in his hand, pulsing like a heartbeat and Wonwoo looks down again, at the white linen, the leather string tying it close, long as if he was meant to wear it around his neck. But he has no strength to spare,_ _trembling fingers struggling to close around the bag and it’s like holding a small animal in his palm, warm and fluttering._ _He closes his eyes again, and the strange wind is still blowing; there’s whispers riding on its tail, words he doesn’t quite understand yet the meaning seems to spell itself_ _on_ _his skin – a sorrowful plea, a hopeful lament._

_And the bag grows warmer still, a heartbeat stronger than his own in the palm of his hand. Wonwoo stirs but the ground won’t relinquish him; he’s buried, waiting there for the sentence of a serpentine body upon the miry ground. Still there’s the voice in his mind and the voice in the wind, please, please, and Wonwoo grabs the bag harder just as the voices falter, a panic rising in him. The dark swallows all, he knows, rainy winds and chanting voices and the lingering smell of lavender._

_Please, he says, just as he hears it, a massive body dragging itself_ _upon the ground. Please, he repeats, just as the smell of rot and decay assaults him and he can almost see it, the beast, its monstrous shape and gaping maw, darker than dark, rising above him. Wonwoo closes his eyes, looking for the chanting voices, for the smell of_ _rain_ _but he can’_ _t_ _find_ _anything_ _, yet the heartbeat is still there against his palm and he clutches it tighter, asking one last time, just as the darkness moves a_ _bove_ _him, plunging to devour, please, he ask_ _s_ _, save me._

_When the pain never comes, Wonwoo opens his eyes, and the light almost blinds him. He closes them back right away, flickers shifting against his eyelids and it’s a while before he peers through his eyelashes carefully, taking in his surroundings. A white ceiling, a messy desk in a corner, white sheets and a man slumped at his side, curled up too near the edge of the bed. Wonwoo stares, sensation coming gradually back to his body; the weakness of his limbs, the soreness in his back, the dryness of his throat. He’s warm, he realizes, the mattress he lays on soft under hi m , and the room smell s of lavender and something else, something earthy but not unpleasant._

_I_ _t’s actually not that bright, he realizes, the corner of sky he can see through the window telling him night has fallen._ _T_ _he light in the room_ _is_ _coming from a bedside lamp, a warm glow that has his chest constrict almost painfully, something too much like a sob stuck in his_ _lungs_ _. He doesn’t have time to dwell on it; the man next to him stirs, a soft sigh leaving his lips and Wonwoo turns his attention back to him. Dark hair fall in his face, disheveled and unkempt and Wonwoo softly pushes them back, detailing the features underneath, full lips and a soft nose, high cheekbones and a sharp jaw. Wonwoo pulls his hand back, recognition befalling him – he saw that man standing behind a counter_ _with a scowl on his handsome face_ _, saw him somewhere else, too, in an endless void, a devouring dark._

 _He remembers something else, too, a heartbeat in the palm of his hand and gently, carefully,_ _Wonwoo shi_ _f_ _ts on his side to_ _press his hand against the man’s chest. He feels it,_ _right against his skin_ _and the man is warm, warm and alive and Wonwoo leaves his hand there, closing his eyes, li_ _stening_ _for the sounds of the man’s breaths,_ _shifting closer to feel more of his warmth._

 _Wonwoo doesn’t know how much time lapses, but soon there’s a shift, an intake of breath,_ _and_ _when he opens his eyes the man is staring back at him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading I'm always super nervous when I write for Seventeen for some reason. I am on [twitter](https://twitter.com/BlanquetteAO3) if you wish to have a word :'))


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read the previous chapter!  
> There's a bit more angst in this one and I updated the tags with "eventual happy ending" because I don't want to worry anyone too much, the real world is already making a great job at that. Take care of yourselves and I hope you'll like the update!

**1.**

A soft weight against his chest stirs Minghao from his sleep, and when he opens his eyes, his breath freezes in his lungs. Wonwoo is laying next to him, closer than he’d been, and his hand lays against Minghao’s breast, fingers splayed and pressing slightly as if he’d wanted to feel his heartbeat. And maybe he did, his brow slightly furrowed as in concentration. Minghao swallows, shifting slightly to look at the door, still ajar as Joshua left it, the room empty of anyone else. He looks back at Wonwoo, at the colors sipping back to his gaunt face, and before he can reach out and touch him the man’s eyes snap open.

Minghao parts his lips to speak just as Wonwoo scrambles back, staring at him with wide, startled eyes. He’s not unlike a scared animal, Minghao thinks, remaining perfectly still on his side of the bed. He tries out a smile, something he hopes placating but nothing changes in Wonwoo’s face besides the slight rosy dusting of his cheeks and Minghao wonders if he’s embarrassed, maybe, having being caught touching him, too intimate a gesture between almost-strangers.

“You shouldn’t move too much,” Minghao says, voice quiet. “You’ve been out for a few days.”

“What happened?” Wonwoo asks after a silence and his voice is raw with disuse, the man clearing his throat and Minghao realizes then how thirsty he must be.

“You came to ask for datura, and collapsed before you could yell at me for not wanting to sell it to you.”

“I collapsed.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not all that happened, is it?”

Minghao hesitates, considers shielding him from most of the truth but he quickly changes his mind; there is no point in white lies.

“We tried to wake you. We went into your dream, but it’s not really a dream, is it? There’s something within you, I could feel it before. You said you didn’t want to fight anymore, and then we thought we’d lost you. But we tried one last time, and it didn’t seem to work. But I guess it did, since here you are.”

Wonwoo sighs, shifting on his back but Minghao notices he doesn’t scoot any further from him, staying where he is, not quite close but not quite far either. Minghao thinks back to the hand against his chest, to the slight tilt of Wonwoo’s head towards himself and he knows now, what he’d been looking for; warmth, reassurance, a sense that this heavy, all encompassing darkness was held at bay, if for a little while.

“Who’s ‘we’?” Wonwoo asks then, eyes riveted to the ceiling.

“Two other people who live here. One you already met. The cashier? The other is… He knows a lot.”

Wonwoo nods, closing his eyes again and Minghao stares at his profile, at the lines of exhaustion and the deep bruises under his eyes.

“How are you feeling?”

“Tired.”

“The shadow, what is it?”

“A monster.”

“Yeah, I gathered as much when it tried to eat me.”

A small smile appears on Wonwoo’s lips, something short lived but there all the same that Minghao answers with one of his own, even if Wonwoo isn’t looking at him.

“You met it, then. Delightful, right? It’s just… It’s something I have to keep.”

“Keep?”

“Mh.”

Wonwoo’s already quiet voice loses still more force, and his eyes remain close, his breathing slowly evening out. Minghao is about to let him fall asleep when Wonwoo shifts suddenly, forcing himself awake, rubbing his hands against his face as he tries to sit up.

“What is it?” Minghao asks, following Wonwoo’s movements.

“I just, I can’t – I don’t want to fall asleep.”

Wonwoo doesn’t meet Minghao’s eyes and Minghao understands, then, the exhaustion, the trembling hands, the temper; understands the slumber Wonwoo had fallen into, understands why it had been so difficult to drag him from it – he’d eschewed the shadow for long enough, and when he’d fallen, it had trapped him.

“How long have you gone without sleep?”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember, days? Sometimes I doze but never for long.”

“Is that why you wanted datura?”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo half laughs, “kind of a stupid idea, but it would have kept me awake.”

“Awake and off your fucking face.”

“Didn’t seem to matter at the time.”

“I can help,” Minghao suddenly says, mouth running ahead of his thoughts. Wonwoo looks up at him, disbelief tainted of hope in his stormy eyes and Minghao shifts off the bed without waiting for an answer.

“Wait here.”

He doesn’t make it far before a hand shoots up to grab his wrist, and Wonwoo’s retracts his fingers almost immediately as Minghao stops in his tracks.

“Sorry,” Wonwoo says, as if the gesture had escaped him. “I just… I’m fine. It can wait.”

Minghao cocks an eyebrow at him, the man averting his gaze, teeth worrying at his bottom lip. He seems uneasy under Minghao’s stare, shrinking back towards the pillows he laid on and once again Minghao is reminded of a skittish animal; half-starved cats he would coax from behind dumpsters as a child, scared rabbits in the headlights of his car.

“You must be hungry,” he says then, “I can bring you something, or do you want to go downstairs?”

“I– yeah, okay. I’d like to move a bit.”

Minghao simply nods, offering his arm as Wonwoo gingerly lifts himself off the bed and hesitates, wavering on his feet before leaning his weight against the outstretched hand.

“Sorry,” he repeats, not looking at Minghao as the latter guides him out of the room. “This feels stupid.”

“It’s okay,” Minghao says, matching his pace with Wonwoo’s own. “Nothing stupid about this.”

Wonwoo falls quiet, head dipped low and Minghao notices then that he’s still wearing Jeonghan’s mallows crown, the petals wilted in his hair, light purple against a silky dark. His gaze travels down Wonwoo’s profile, follow the angle of his chin and the line of his throat down to the dip of his collarbones and something pushes against Minghao’s ribs, a softness he hadn’t felt in a long time; and he wonders, too, how can someone so beautiful can harbor something so dark.

“The heck you staring at?” a sharp voice interrupts his thoughts and Minghao’s gaze snaps up, staring straight ahead of himself. He had forgotten about Wonwoo’s temper, the quick anger and the harsh words.

“Nothing, sorry,” Minghao says, hoping the heat he feels rising to his cheeks is hidden by the dimness of the corridor. Wonwoo narrows his eyes at him but doesn’t have time to answer – they made it to the staircase and he has to lean against Minghao, going down carefully.

When they step in the kitchen the smell of black tea hangs in the air, and there’s water in the kettle, still warm. Minghao sets it back to boil, going through the cupboards as Wonwoo sits at the table, resting his head upon his arms. Minghao can feel his gaze on himself as he flits about the room, retrieving black rice porridge from the fridge he reheats on the stove, adding dried longans to the mixture just as the kettle starts whistling.

“What kind of tea do you like?” Minghao asks, voice subdued as if he wished to protect the soft silence that had befallen them during his preparations. Wonwoo shrugs, heavy-lidded eyes trained on Minghao’s hands as he fetches the kettle from the stove.

“Anything’s fine.”

Minghao nods, humming under his breath as he retrieves a ginger root from a wicker basket on the windowsill, chopping slices he puts in two mugs before filling them with water. He adds hearty lops of honey and a slice of lemon before bringing the mugs to the table, sitting opposite Wonwoo who straightens up, stifling a yawn.

“Drink this while your food cooks.”

“Thanks,” Wonwoo answers, wrapping his hands around the heated mug. “So, who are you, really?” he continues, staring at the water as the sharp smell of ginger rises.

“Ah, yeah, well, the name’s Xu Minghao, I introduced myself earlier but maybe you don’t remember.”

“No, I remember your name,” Wonwoo says, looking up from his mug straight at Minghao, his gaze steady, and Minghao feels it again, this sharp feeling against his ribs, pushing and pulling under his heart. He averts his eyes then, taking a sip of his tea even though it burns his mouth.

“I meant more like, you’re not any average schmuck, are you?” Wonwoo continues, indifferent or unaware of Minghao’s discomfort. “Not if you can just stroll into my mind and drag me back to the world of the living.”

“I had help,” Minghao says, a small smile on his lips as he looks up. “And it wasn’t as easy as you make it sound.”

“Why do you sell all that crap up front if you’re the real deal?”

The words sting more than Minghao would like, and he shifts in his chair, getting up to go stir the porridge cooking on the stove.

“I’m not– I’m not the real deal. I just know some stuff, and I had help. Lots of it.”

“Those two guys you mentioned.”

“Yeah,” Minghao nods, cutting off the heat and pouring the porridge into a bowl he brings back to the table. “You’ll meet them later. Can I ask you something first?”

“What?” Wonwoo asks, mouth already full.

“You said it was something you had to keep. Can you elaborate?”

Wonwoo tilts his head, swallowing down another mouthful of porridge before letting his spoon rest against the side of the bowl with a soft clinking sound that has Minghao look down.

“I guess I owe you that much.” Wonwoo shrugs, sitting back against his chair. “But I don’t really know what it is, the shadow. It’s just something we – it’s always been there. My dad, my grandmother, her grandmother before her. We always had to keep it. Trap it inside us until it drives us crazy and we have to pass it to the next sucker in line.”

“That’s–” Minghao interrupts himself, looking down at the tea he swirls in his mug, the slice of lemon floating to the surface. “I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Wonwoo says, and his tone is sharp as he stabs the porridge with his spoon.

“What do you dream of?”

“What?”

“You said you didn’t want to fall asleep. Do you always go back to the same place, or do you see other things, too?”

Wonwoo remains silent for a spell, considering Minghao seated opposite him who submits to the scrutiny, patiently sipping his tea. Wonwoo sighs, then, and a tension Minghao hadn’t fully noticed seems to seep out of him, shoulders sagging as he rests his chin against his palm.

“What you saw, it’s not… It’s not always like this. Most of the time I’m strong enough to keep it back, but the shadow, it – it wears you down. It sneaks into your dreams until it can drag you to that dark place.”

“Sneaks into your dreams?”

“Yeah. It shows you things, I guess?”

“What kind of things?”

“Aren’t you the curious one,” Wonwoo says, gaze dropping to his bowl once again. He takes up the spoon, pushing around the food without actually eating any of it. Minghao shifts, leaning a bit further over the table, Wonwoo’s gaze falling on him.

“If I’m gonna help, I need–”

“I’m not asking for your help,” Wonwoo interrupts, dropping the spoon with an unpleasant noise as he leans back.

“But you need it,” Minghao insists, and the frown appearing on Wonwoo’s face is almost familiar, a watered down version of the scowl he had worn all those days ago, as he’d set a bunch of useless crystals upon the counter. But then, the fight seeps out of him with a forced sigh, Wonwoo brushing his messy hair back, the mallow petals still caught in it falling to the floor unnoticed. He splays his hands over the tabletop then, looking straight at Minghao.

“Alright. Most of the time, I don’t – I don’t really remember what I see. I just wake-up screaming. Sometimes I do remember and it’s… It’s hard to describe. It’s more like a feeling. Absolute despair. Terror. Loss and sorrow. I know someone dies. Over and over again, and when I look down my hands are covered in blood, but it’s not really my hands. I don’t really have a body. I’m just – there, somehow. And, I don’t know. Something is happening to me. I’m changing into something I’m not supposed to be. But this might just be my mind slipping from me. We all end up in madhouses.”

Wonwoo’s gaze shifts from Minghao as he says this, falling to his hands, to the food and the warm tea, running over the quaint little kitchen and Minghao clears his throat, bringing Wonwoo’s gaze back to him.

“I need to see what you see,” he says, voice quiet. Wonwoo’s tired eyes widen, and he shakes his head vehemently, pushing back from the table.

“No way. You’ve seen enough already, I barely know you and this is – look, you just can’t, okay?”

“What if I can make you sleep without dreaming? What if I can… take the dreams away for a little while.”

Wonwoo pauses, brow creasing as he stares, and in his eyes Minghao can see this dash of hope again, quickly swallowed by the darkness swirling there.

“You can’t – how would you even do that? No one can do that.”

“Someone can,” Minghao says. “I think,” he adds as an afterthought, Wonwoo throwing his hands to the ceiling.

“You think? See, you don’t even know for sure. You’re just saying things. Why would you even do that? What do you get out of this?”

 _I_ _don’t know,_ Minghao thinks, _nothing, really. I just want to._

“Peace of mind?” Minghao tries. “One less angry customer to diss my shop.”

Wonwoo stares warily for a second and then, amazingly, Wonwoo laughs. Something exhausted, slightly crazy at the edges but there all the same and Minghao smiles tentatively, waiting for the fit to subside. Wonwoo wipes at his eyes, shakes his head and looks up at him, the remnants of a smile upon his lips.

“Alright, okay. Help me then.”

Minghao nods, pushing his chair back to get up.

“I need to ask my – friends, for advice. Do you want to go back to the bedroom?”

“I’m gonna stay here, if you don’t mind. I’m not done eating and… this room is nice.”

“Yeah, sure,” Minghao says softly. He stops before crossing the threshold, turning back to stare at Wonwoo.

“What happens, if you can’t hold it back anymore?”

Wonwoo looks up at him, putting his mug back down, something grave in his face Minghao had yet to see.

“I don’t know,” he says, “but you’ve seen what it brings.”

Putrefaction, death and rot. A devouring darkness. Minghao bites his lips, gaze falling from Wonwoo’s dark eyes, hand clenched on the doorknob.

“Yeah,” he says, voice strained, “I’ve seen it.”

His steps are heavy as he leaves the kitchen, and the house seems darker, quieter than it used to as Minghao walks through the corridors, hunting for Jeonghan. It’s holding its breath, it seems, waiting for the fallout; and Minghao thinks back to Wonwoo, seated amongst the familiar decor of the little kitchen, thinks of his sunken features and the quiet despair in his eyes, the hidden fear hanging from his every words. Once again Minghao has made promises he isn’t sure how to keep, once again he had run forward when he barely knew how to walk.

But he isn’t alone, this time, not entirely, and he finds Jeonghan in his usual spot, curled up on the library’s couch; Joshua is asleep by his side, head pillowed in his lap. Jeonghan lifts his gaze from his book as Minghao enters, surprise evident in his face.

“Something happened?”

“Yeah, he’s awake.”

Jeonghan eyes widens, and he makes to get up before Minghao lifts a hand in a placating gesture.

“Wait, before you go see him I told him that… Can you take dreams away?”

“Take dreams away?” Jeonghan repeats, closing his book and focusing all his attention on Minghao.

“He’s exhausted, he can barely hold a conversation. He needs to sleep. Really sleep. Without dreaming.”

“Ah, I see,” Jeonghan understands then, brow furrowing.

“Can you do that?”

“I don’t kn–”

“He can,” a third voice interrupts him, Joshua sitting up, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“I can?” Jeonghan turns to him in obvious surprise and Joshua smiles, something soft Minghao only ever sees him directing at Jeonghan.

“Yeah, in theory. Just like how you brought Minghao into his dreams. You can bring the dreams to Minghao.”

“You mean–”

“You’ll dream in his stead,” Joshua says, turning to Minghao who stays rooted in his spot. “But that cannot be a pleasant experience.”

“Will I be in any danger?”

Joshua seems to mule it over, sitting up straighter, a crease on his forehead. He shakes his head then, looking at Minghao.

“No, I don’t think so. Not as long as they are normal dreams and not… Whatever that was.”

“I’ll do it,” Minghao says, wishing he could feel as confident as he sounds.

“Good,” Joshua says, stifling a yawn that brings tears to his eyes. They’re all exhausted, Minghao realizes, even himself; there’s a weight pressing against each of his limbs, a dull ache echoing in his head. And Minghao remembers, then, days without sleep, _sometimes I doze but never for long_ and the night terrors every night, a dread serpent stalking every dreams. There’s a stirring under his heart, something sharp that almost hurt and Minghao swallows hard, taking a small step forward.

“Can we try tonight?”

Jeonghan and Joshua exchange a glance, something heavy with meaning Minghao is once again not privy to, and they nod in unison, Joshua taking Jeonghan’s hand in his, softly like an absent gesture.

“Yeah, okay. We have to prepare a little bit, maybe you can go get Wonwoo?”

“Yeah, sure, okay, do we do it here or…?”

“Your bedroom would be better.”

“Yeah, of course. I’ll bring him there.”

Minghao stops outside the library, at the top of the stairs that will lead him to the kitchen. He’s not sure of the hour and when he looks up towards the window at the end of the corridor it seems like time has ceased flowing, the night frozen in anticipation, the same one he can feel in his lungs, in his stomach. A strange trepidation, a fluttering of his heart muted by the exhaustion in his limbs. This feels like an hour removed, hidden from time itself and this is what he needs, what they all need; a respite, space to try.

  
  


**2.**

Wonwoo is reclining on the bed, long legs stretched before him, arms crossed over his chest as Minghao hovers uncertainly next to the edge of the bed. Joshua is silently watching them as he leans against the threshold, Jeonghan standing before him.

“We’ve already met,” Jeonghan’s saying, “I’m the fraud.”

“Yeah, great to meet you properly,” Wonwoo answers in a flat tone, but there’s the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips.

“And this is Joshua,” Jeonghan continues, pointing over his shoulder, “or Sinistrad if you’re unfunny like Minghao.”

“Do you steal people’s souls too?” Wonwoo asks, tilting his head to look at Joshua. Next to him Minghao gasps, staring with wide eyes.

“You know who that is?” he asks with a bit too much enthusiasm, Wonwoo raising his eyebrows at him.

“Yeah? The video game fucking sucked but the books are really good.”

“We got to save this man,” Minghao turns to the two others, Jeonghan rolling his eyes.

“If he’s turning out to be like you I vote we let him die.”

“What are video games?” Joshua pipes in from behind Jeonghan, resting his head on the other man’s shoulder. “I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Minghao starts, “it’s like games but on a machine? And you control a character or something and he has to do stuff in a virtual world, and you know what? We don’t have time for that,” he interrupts himself, turning back to Wonwoo.

“You guys are entertaining,” the latter says, having grabbed a pillow to use as an armrest. “How the fuck can you not know what video games are? Where did you find this guy?”

“Dead under a tree,” Minghao sighs, “maybe I’ll tell you the details later. Now can we get on with it?”

There’s a grumbling assent, Jeonghan and Joshua fully stepping into the room as Wonwoo mumbles something about trees. Candles are lighted, incense burnt, and it’s only when Minghao lays down on the bed next to Wonwoo that he fully gauges the change in the atmosphere. The light has dimmed, it seems, Joshua’s presence at the foot of the bed slightly haunting, his tall frame blocking his view of the open door. Minghao spares a glance at Wonwoo next to him and he looks half-gone already, the deep bruises under his eyes almost purple, his lips dry. Jeonghan is threading white heather blooms into his hair and this looks too much like a funeral, Minghao thinks, averting his gaze to look at the ceiling.

Jeonghan adorns him too, gentle hands in his hair, and when he’s done he climbs on the bed with them, sitting cross-legged near the edge, placing his hands on each of their shins.

“You guys have to hold hands. We have to close the circle.”

Minghao glances at Wonwoo, who looks back but doesn’t hold his gaze, offering up his hand instead after a small hesitation, in an almost brusque gesture that has Minghao falter. He takes it nonetheless, and he expected Wonwoo to be cold but he’s warm, his skin soft, fingers applying a soft pressure to the back of Minghao’s hand. He’s not looking at Minghao, jaw clenched, eyes riveted to the ceiling and Minghao can feel the tension coming off him in waves.

“Ready?” Jeonghan asks, and they both nod, resting their clasped hands against the comforter. Joshua’s voice rises then, chanting in the old tongue, something almost too quiet to hear, something soft that calls for peace, for calm, for the heaviness upon their eyelids to morph into sleep. Minghao spares a glance to Wonwoo and he’s closed his eyes, his face losing the hard edges it wears in consciousness. Minghao brings their hands closer to himself just as he can feel sleep claiming him, too, and he closes his eyes, Wonwoo’s face on the back of his eyelids, a fluttering under his heart. It’s not long, before he feels himself sink, losing the last dredge of his thoughts. And then, then he dreams.

 _It’s pleasant, at first. He sits at a kitchen table, sipping on_ _a cup_ _of_ _tea and someone is speaking to him, yet he cannot raise his head to look at them. But it’s fine, their voice is calming, the tea is warm, the kitchen lighted in a soft glow._ _There’s food at his elbow and even though he cannot feel his body, he knows that he is hungry, and thus he reaches for the silver spoon, bringing the food to his mouth. It’s good, at first, slightly spicy and flavorful, and then, it’s not._ _There’s a_ _n acrid taste on his tongue that make_ _s_ _him spit his mouthful and he’_ _s watching_ _the fat bodies of white worms squirm on the tabletop amidst the remnants of rotten food;_ _when he looks down the bowl is full of them, carrion beetles crawling over their writhing forms_ _._

 _The voice has changed, too; it’s not speaking anymore but chanting, something in a_ _growling_ _tongue, something full of hatred and despair and_ _Minghao_ _’s not sitting anymore, he’s standing in a darkened room and there’s someone else there, someone vaguely familiar clutching their bloodied arm and he stares, stares and stares and the voice rises in strength, the words imperious and he can only obey, obey to commands he doesn’t understand but his body is moving towards the wounded man as dread fills him._ _He_ _knows what must happen now, he knows even before his hands rise and it’s not really his hands; he doesn’t really have a body yet he’s there all the same, trudging towards the wounded man who watches him approach without moving and he wants to scream at him_ _to run, to hide, to defend himself because there is only one end for him here but he’s plunging his hands into_ _the man’s_ _chest and the blood spurts, warm and_ _sticky_ _against his arms and he reaches for his heart, his heart still beating as_ _he_ _pulls it out_ _and the man_ _falls as his feet, dead, dead, dead and the voice is crying, a wail that fills him with_ _terror._

 _And he’s falling, deep under the earth where it’s dark and humid and something’s waiting for him there, something old and forgotten, something that smells like the blood on his hands and feels like the a_ _gony in his heart_ _and it’s him, it is, all the ugliness and the fear and the hatred, it pours inside him,_ _a_ _liquid darkness that devours all that_ _he is, all that he loves, the wind and the rain and the songs amongst the leaves,_ _soft light and the smell of autumn, until there is nothing, nothing, nothing but a_ _n endless darkness and a burning hatred._

Minghao knows he’s been screaming when he wakes, his throat raw, unshed tears burning at the corner of his eyes. Someone’s holding him, calling his name in a soft voice and he clings to them, burying his face against their chest.

“You’re alright, Hao, you’re back, okay? Look at me,” the voice says as warm hands frame his face and he’s staring at Jeonghan, at his wide eyes filled with worry. There’s a soft pressure on his right hand and when he looks down Wonwoo’s still holding it, sitting up near the bundle of them, the same worry in his face but recognition, too, and Minghao understands that he knows what he saw. There’s relief to find there, in that shared knowledge, and Minghao wonders how long Wonwoo had to go, without anyone understanding, how long he had to bear this burden alone because telling isn’t the same as feeling and no words will ever come close to the depths of despair found in slumber.

“Did you sleep?” Minghao says, and a strained smile makes its way to Wonwoo’s lips as he nods, and Minghao closes his eyes, keeping that image with him. “Good, then.”

“What did you see?” another voice rises, and Minghao opens his eyes on Joshua, still standing by the foot of the bed.

“I was killing someone,” Minghao says, “I didn’t want to but I did it anyway, I ripped their heart out.”

“Why did you do it?” Joshua asks in a strained voice.

“Someone told me to. They were – they were speaking the old tongue.”

Joshua’s breath itches, something flickering in his gaze as he takes a step back, features swallowed by the dimness of the room.

“They ordered you to kill in the old tongue?”

“Yeah. And I did, and then something happened to me. I changed.”

“Changed how?”

Minghao shrugs, gaze falling to the hand clasped in his, thin, too thin, and when he looks up Wonwoo is staring at him, something burning in his dark eyes.

“You changed into a monster,” he says, voice quiet. “You swallowed the darkness and you became it, a monstrous body of despair and hatred.”

The silence that rides on his words is too thick to be broken and Minghao holds Wonwoo’s gaze, finding there the acknowledgment he needs, the understanding, and he tightens his hold on his hand as he shifts his gaze to Joshua. The man is still standing back, shrouded in shadows, an intensity in his face Minghao hadn’t seen in quite a while, not since he’d come back from his brother’s grave, where more than just a body had been put to rest. But it’s back, he can see it in his eyes, an old darkness, a century old weariness. As Minghao shifts uneasily Wonwoo’s hand slips from his, another move and he leaves Jeonghan’s warmth, scooting to the edge of the bed where Joshua stands.

“You know something,” Minghao says, and it isn’t a question. Joshua holds his gaze, but not for long, a heavy breath leaving him as he averts his eyes.

“Nothing for sure. I just – I need time. Trust me?”

Minghao is tempted to push, but Joshua had never been pleading, had never asked anything of him, and maybe this could be a start; a little trust, a little surrender. And so he nods, retreating back towards the others and it hits him, then, as he sees Joshua standing alone at the foot of the bed, it hits him how apart they really are, despite all the acceptance, all the love Joshua had been given; theirs was a divide they’ll never breach, a divide made of centuries, of sorrows the depths of which they’ll never understand. And it’s here again, this strange compassion, this empathy for someone as alone as he is and Minghao wants to reach out, he does, but there is no words, no motion that will ever bring him closer.

So he’ll take the relief on Joshua’s face, he’ll take his half smile and the hesitance in his eyes and maybe it will grow, in time, a little stunted, a little imperfect but it’s fine; what is perfect is already dead and Minghao smiles back, something brittle at the edges but they’ll get there, they will, what they share more precious than what divides them.

“Not to be crass, but anyone else hungry?” Jeonghan’s voice suddenly breaks the silence that threatens to swallow them, and a tension Minghao hadn’t realized was yet building crumbles with it, Joshua’s shoulders sagging, Wonwoo smiling faintly.

“I could eat again,” the latter says, and it’s enough to get them moving, shuffling down to the kitchen where they have to drag an extra chair, Minghao slumping over the table as Jeonghan and Joshua busy themselves at the counter.

“Are you alright?” a soft voice asks, and when Minghao looks up Wonwoo is staring back at him tentatively, taking a seat opposite him. He looks different, somehow, cautious, almost timid, none of the hostile fire that had inhabited him on their first meetings. Minghao can’t imagine what it must feel like, to have someone see inside yourself, see what haunts you, what kills you. But there’s a touch of worry there, too, something that tugs at Minghao’s heart and he has to look down before it shows on his face, a light dusting on his cheeks, a mist in his eyes.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It was just… I didn’t expect that? I guess.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo says after a snort. “I bet you didn’t.”

Minghao looks up just as Wonwoo gazes back, an amused smile still on his lips and there’s something between them then, a complicity that didn’t use to be and the warmth Minghao finds there sends a shiver through him, resolving itself in a stirring against his ribs, a fluttering under his heart that has him avert his gaze again. The moment is broken anyway, a loud shriek coming from the stove as Jeonghan tries to use his shadows to launch potato peels at Joshua who retaliates with a flick of his wrist, the soggy things lending on Jeonghan’s hair, his face, his shirt.

“That’s disgusting!”

“That’s exactly what you tried to do to me, sorry I’m just better at this whole magic thing, being older and wiser.”

“Barely!” Jeonghan screeches, using the much more mundane but way more effective method of fistful-of-garlic to avenge himself.

Minghao rolls his eyes, stifling a smile as he looks back at Wonwoo, a snide remark on his tongue. But it dies as he sees the other’s face, dark eyes staring at Jeonghan, brows furrowed, lips slightly parted. Not Jeonghan, Minghao realizes then, Jeonghan’s hands, where wisps of what looks like dark smoke are still hanging, disappearing in the sleeves of the wide sweater he’s wearing.

“Wonwoo?” Minghao asks, worry eating at him.

“This – this is… It’s like in the dream,” Wonwoo finally says, gaze trailing back to Minghao, asking for an explanation.

“It’s not,” Minghao says, “not really. Jeonghan’s shadows are – they’re not evil, not like the thing in the dream.”

“They could be,” Wonwoo says, with such intensity in his voice that Minghao reels back, and it takes a minute to register that the bickering at the stove has stopped, Joshua and Jeonghan staring at them both. It’s back, Minghao realizes, that distrust, that fire burning low under Wonwoo’s skin and Wonwoo sits too straight, shoulders tense, eyes darting between Minghao and Jeonghan, whose hands have disappeared in the sleeves of his sweater.

“They’re good,” Jeonghan says in a strangled voice, “they just do what I tell them and–”

“They’re as good as you are,” Wonwoo interrupts him, voice cold, and Minghao watches as Joshua tenses beside Jeonghan, watches as he clenches his jaw, his gaze falling to the floor. There is something he knows, Minghao realizes then, something he isn’t saying, and the trust he’d promised him is too brittle to withstand the doubts that creep in his mind. Minghao stands brusquely, startling everyone as he grips Joshua’s wrist to drag him outside the kitchen.

“I need to talk to you,” he says, and he can see Joshua looking above his shoulder at a helpless Jeonghan but Minghao doesn’t leave time for protests. He stops in the ill-lighted staircase leading to the reserve and Joshua leans against the wall, looking at him as if awaiting punishment. The change in him is stark; laughing not ten minutes ago he’s now almost grim, jaw clenched, shifty eyes looking for a safe place to land. And Minghao knows this is his doing, and he marvels at the affect he can have on him, despite everything; and Joshua must care, then, he must, it’s in the worried lines of his face, the downturned corners of his mouth.

“You know something.”

“You said you’d give me time,” Joshua almost whispers, and he sounds tired, exhausted even; Minghao feels almost bad to push.

“You don’t need it though, do you? You know what’s going on. Or you have enough of an idea.”

Joshua stares, fists tensed at his sides and he’s scared, Minghao realizes, there’s a sadness in his eyes that didn’t use to be as he looks at Minghao, looks intently, as if he wanted to commit him to memory.

“I don’t–”

“I won’t hate you,” Minghao interrupts, because this is what it’s all about, isn’t it? The plea for trust, the reluctance, the shifty eyes and the withholding. Joshua’s scared, but not of the unknown shadows treading Wonwoo’s mind, not of the dark dreams chasing his sleep. He’s scared of Minghao, of Jeonghan, of the very real feelings they share and how they could tarnish, how they could break.

“Won’t you?” Joshua asks, and there’s such sorrow in his gaze, such tremor in his voice that Minghao leans towards him almost unconsciously, his hand resting once again upon his wrist, but to comfort this time, to ground and to hold.

“You asked me to trust you. You should trust me, too.”

Joshua stares back at him, worrying at his bottom lip and he sighs, then, gaze shifting to the side, down to Minghao’s hand upon his wrist. He keeps it there as he talks, slowly, voice low but steady.

“The man you saw in the dream. The one wounded and killed. He looked like me, didn’t he?”

Minghao jolts, thinking back to the dream, to what he’d seen and it’s true, he realizes; it was the eyes, the same troubling eyes he’d stared at often enough. He nods slowly, Joshua acknowledging him with a sad smile.

“You saw my brother,” he says simply, “you saw my brother as I was killing him.”

Minghao’s eyes widen, his lips parting on words he swallows back because they are the wrong ones, jumbled and weak. And Joshua keeps talking, his gaze still lost upon the floor.

“He was right, you know, Wonwoo. _They’re as good as you are._ I should have known something would happen. I should have known something would happen to the shadows. Such hatred, such atrocity I made them do, it must have changed them. Jeonghan’s shadows are still young, young and playful and he never asks anything of them. Mine were – mine were already old, already halfway corrupt, and I… I turned them into a monster.”

“They smelled of death,” Minghao suddenly says, “they smelled of rot and decay and I felt such hatred, such desire to destroy.”

“I’m sorry,” Joshua says, burying his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry.”

Anger flares under Minghao’s skin, a fire he knows well, anger and loathing but the blaze doesn’t last this time, doused by the true remorse he can hear in Joshua’s voice, by his hunched stance and weary face and Minghao’s past that, he’s past the hostility and the dislike and so takes Joshua’s hands away from his face, keeps them in his as he speaks.

“If you’re sorry, make it better,” Minghao says, “Now that we know what it might be, we can find a way to get rid of it.”

Joshua stares, until a faint smile stretches his lips, and he shakes his head softly.

“I thought you’d at least crucify me.”

“I’m past that,” Minghao says, waving a hand in front of him. “You kinda grew on me.”

“Yeah,” Joshua says, smile widening hesitantly. “I guess I did.”

“Now,” Minghao says, an unfamiliar warmth in his chest that’s too embarrassing to even acknowledge, “who’s gonna break the news to Wonwoo that he’s being haunted by a hundred years old shadow monster created through magic murdering?”

Joshua stares, and says nothing. Minghao sighs.

  
  


**3 .**

It goes over better than expected. Wonwoo is seated on the library’s couch, a pillow over his crossed legs, elbows firmly planted over it and his chin in his palms. He’s staring at Minghao, who gazes up at him worriedly from his place on the floor.

“So yeah,” Minghao’s saying, “we think the shadow monster is like, the murder weapon. And somehow it’s inside you.”

Wonwoo remains silent, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“You okay?” Minghao asks, hands clasped together so tight his knuckles are turning white.

“I mean, at this point, this might as well be happening,” Wonwoo says in an unimpressed tone. “I thought you were kidding when you said you found that Joshua guy dead under a tree,” he adds almost as an afterthought.

“I kinda wish I was, to be honest.”

“I may need a minute or two to process all that.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever you need,” Minghao says, trying his best to offer a reassuring smile. Wonwoo lifts an eyebrow at him, and when a minute passes where nothing happens he clears his throat, gaze shifting.

“I meant, like, without you here.”

“Oh shit, yeah, sorry,” Minghao says as he scrambles to his feet, trudging to the library door.

“I’ll be in my office so if you need anything, just… Yeah, just like, I’ll be over there.”

“Sure,” Wonwoo says, something vaguely amused in his face and Minghao closes the door on him, leaning against it for a minute, replaying the whole awkward scene in his mind just to torture himself. A muffled thud from his office rips him out of his thoughts and he marches himself to the room, where Joshua is precariously holding a pile of book against his chest, looking forlornly at a volume on the floor.

“Did you find anything?” Minghao asks, not really caring about the mess.

“No, but I reorganized your collection,” Joshua answers him, “why do you have so many books about ferns?”

“I just think they’re neat,” Minghao says lamely as he goes to slump in his desk chair.

“Did it go that bad?” Joshua asks, a touch of worry in his voice.

“No, it was pretty okay, he was surprisingly calm. He asked for a minute to process. Maybe he wants to freak out in private.”

“Yeah, that would be understandable,” Joshua’s voice comes from behind Minghao’s chair as he stacks the books on the lower shelf. “Still, it’s good that he didn’t… I don’t know, deny it or something.”

“I’m pretty sure he already knew about witches, so like…”

Joshua hums and they both fall silent, Minghao moping at his desk as Joshua finishes his organizing. It’s daunting, Minghao thinks. He’d thought that once they knew what the shadow serpent was, it would be easy. The solution would present itself and they would save Wonwoo, chase the nightmares from his sleep, drag the monster into the light. But nothing is ever easy, and Wonwoo would drop dead of exhaustion before they could do anything for him.

Minghao sighs, burying his head in his arms and he’s ready to give up when there’s the grating sound of a chair being dragged over the floor, and the soft thud of a body falling into it. When he looks up Wonwoo is there, right across his desk, staring at him. He’s slightly disheveled, hair sticking up on one side and maybe Minghao was right about his private freak out. But he looks good, like this, cheeks dusted pink, eyes alight; he looks more alive than he ever did and Minghao stares a bit longer than he should, Wonwoo cocking his head to one side, raising an eyebrow. Amused, again, as if he knew something Minghao did not.

“I got something on my face?”

“No, sorry,” Minghao says hurriedly, straightening in his chair, rubbing the torpor from his eyes. “Did you need something?”

“No. But you do, right?”

As Wonwoo speaks Minghao can feel Joshua stand up behind him, can hear him take the few steps that separate him from the desk.

“What do you think we need?” he asks, amusement in his voice.

“Some sort of hint? To get rid of that thing. Cause you got nothing, right?”

“We don’t,” Minghao says, too tired to even try a comforting lie.

Wonwoo nods as he shifts slightly, producing from his pocket a folded paper he throws on the desk.

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“Did you rip that out of a book?” Minghao asks as he extends his hand, unfolding the paper. There’s a symbol drawn over the words on the page, a single line with the extremities bent each to one side. A symbol that holds no meaning for Minghao.

“It was a shitty one, no harm done,” Wonwoo says as they peer over the page. “Why does your library have pencils but no paper anyway? _”_

“To take notes in margins – look, just don’t go destroying my books, even if they’re shitty.”

“Why do you have shitty books to beginning with?”

“Which book is it from anyway?” Minghao asks, abandoning the paper to look up at Wonwoo, who reclined in his chair as if he owned the place. “Maybe you just have shitty taste, you’re not even–”

“Where did you find that?” Joshua suddenly asks, an urgency in his voice that has both Minghao and Wonwoo straighten, looking up at him. Wonwoo hesitates before speaking, the gravity of Joshua’s tone slightly worrying, and his gaze darts back to Minghao as he answers.

“Nowhere? I always had it.”

“What do you mean you always had it?” Joshua presses, leaning his hands on the desk to support his weight.

“It’s – some sort of birthmark? We all have it. Everyone in my family who gets the monster handed down to them.” Wonwoo hesitates then, eyes settling on Joshua. “I don’t know what it means. Do you? Is it a curse?”

“It’s not a curse,” Joshua says, shaking his head.

“What is it then?” Minghao asks, sharing a disconcerted glance with Wonwoo.

“Eihaz,” Joshua answers. “The rune of the yew tree.”

Silence befalls them, then, dread creeping over Minghao’s skin and he remembers that place, he’d been there once, in a dream that wasn’t really a dream; he had traipsed over mounds of broken bones, had tripped on smashed skulls, empty orbits staring at him with a mocking rictus until he had found roots under the moss, the roots of the yew tree, until he had felt the magic that laid there, old and forgotten, until he’d asked for something he was never given.

“Minghao.”

Joshua’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts and Minghao looks back at him, and he seems taller, somehow, older too, a commanding air to him that didn’t use to be. And Minghao wonders if maybe this is closer to what he’d looked like, in another life, if this is a glimpse of the man that was cast out, fearsome and proud.

“What do you need me to do?” Minghao asks; he can feel the shift in the atmosphere, something febrile hanging there, a glint in Joshua’s dark eyes, jitters in his own limbs.

“You had letters, right? Letters and journals. I need everything you can find, everything relating to the events after my death.”

“What will you do?”

“Think,” Joshua says, a heavy weight behind the simple word. Minghao nods, getting up from his chair and Wonwoo mimics him, falling into step beside him as Minghao reaches his side of the desk.

“Can I help?” he asks, voice tentative. “I don’t really want to sit around doing nothing.”

“Sure,” Minghao says without a second thought, and the small smile Wonwoo gives him quells all the uneasiness that rises as he realizes he’ll have to let Wonwoo into his archives, let him browse his painstakingly assembled collection, documents and pictures retracing the history of a family he never knew.

“Just… Don’t rip anything out.”

Wonwoo rolls his eyes, stopping short of shoving him.

“It was just one time. Why do you even own _Naked came the stranger_? It was like, made to be bad.”

“Cause it’s funny,” Minghao rebukes weakly, just as they make it to the bottom of the stairs. “Wait, I thought I’d hidden that one.”

“Oh, you did. Out of shame I’m guessing.”

Minghao narrows his eyes at Wonwoo who makes a face, before guiding him towards the reserve. It doesn’t escape him that Wonwoo must have looked through all the library before finding a volume no one would miss.

“You know you could have just asked for paper?”

“Yeah, but how cool was that when I just threw the paper on your desk?”

“Did you rehearse it?”

“In my head, yeah.”

Minghao stops on a step, looking back at Wonwoo behind him.

“You’re–”

“What?”

“Nevermind,” Minghao says as he reaches the bottom of the small staircase, walking past the reserve’s door to stop in front of the next one.

“No come on, say it, what am I?”

“You’re not privy to my every thoughts.”

“I should be,” Wonwoo says, and there’s another gibe on his lips but it dies as Minghao pushes open the door, and Wonwoo just gapes.

“What the heck is all this?” he asks, passing by Minghao to fully step into the room. Just like in the reserve, the shelves here are arranged into rows under a dim light-bulb hanging from the ceiling, but instead of strange objects they hold boxes of documents; photographs and newspapers and journals, letters stacked together and held by ribbons. Wonwoo grabs at the closest one, retrieving a photograph from the pile inside, staring for a second before shoving it in Minghao’s face.

“Who’s the dreamboat?”

Minghao rolls his eyes, grabbing the picture to set it farther from his face in order to actually see what’s in it. He recognize the figure instantly; he’d stared at it often enough. The neatly parted hair, the sharp eyes and the half smile, a kind of swagger in the way the man holds himself, leaning against the angle of a building, an eyebrow raised at the person taking the picture. Minghao’s mother, maybe, or a friend Minghao had never heard of and never will. Minghao notices something new, too. It doesn’t hurt to look at him anymore. There’s no anger, no yearning, just a vague melancholy sitting low in his belly.

“It’s my dad,” he says, voice steady, handing the photograph back to Wonwoo who stares at it more intently then, flicking his gaze between Minghao and the man in the picture.

“You must take after your mother,” he says, a disappointed lilt in his voice.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean,” Minghao barks as the steps forward, reaching for the picture that Wonwoo hides behind his back, and he’s laughing, the idiot, laughing like Minghao had yet to hear.

“Nothing, nothing, sorry, you’re very handsome too.”

Minghao rolls his eyes, shaking his head as Wonwoo gets the picture out from behind his back to stare at it some more.

“Please don’t get a crush on my estranged father,” Minghao says uncertainly, and Wonwoo’s gaze flies to him, Minghao not entirely sure he likes the concern he can read there, concern not entirely devoid of curiosity.

“You guys are estranged?”

“Yeah,” Minghao shrugs, “or well, I’m not sure it’s the right word. He’d already disappeared before I was born.”

“He disappeared?” Wonwoo asks, gaze shifting back to the photograph and the young man there, leaning coolly against a wall, hands in his pockets, handsome face basked in sunlight.

“Yeah – look, I don’t – you don’t need to know my life story.”

“I guess not,” Wonwoo says, putting back the photograph where it belongs, in its box of forgotten memories. “Maybe you need to tell it, though.”

“What?” Minghao splutters, taken off guard. But Wonwoo has already moved on, stepping between the shelves, fingers brushing against the boxes stacked there.

“What exactly are we looking for?” he asks, turning to Minghao, face basked in shadows. And Minghao stares, thinking back to another afternoon where he’d leaned against someone warm, had told them about a lonely childhood of lies and secrets; and how it had felt, taking this out of himself for someone else to see, someone else to judge. How it had felt, the soft kind of emptiness that had settled over him, the relief that someone knew, someone understood, someone acknowledged the pain.

“I – There’s nothing to tell,” Minghao says then, and Wonwoo stills, looking at him, face carefully blank. “I never knew what happened. He had – I know he had a lot of friends, that he met and dated my mum in university, that he probably never knew she was pregnant and that one day he just disappeared, and no one ever saw him again. There’s puzzled letters from his friends, anguished answers from my mum and then it stops. They stop talking about him and it’s like he never existed. The picture you saw is the only one I have.”

Wonwoo takes a few steps forward, but he stops just as he reaches the first shelf and Minghao finds himself wanting him to come closer so he can see him better, hear him better, feel him better. But Wonwoo stays where he is and as his silence stretches Minghao feels embarrassment rising – he knows how it must have sounded; pitiful, empty, not enough pieces to make a story.

“That must have sucked,” Wonwoo says then, eyebrows raised and voice slow. And Minghao – Minghao bursts out laughing, to the increasing astonishment of Wonwoo.

“Dude, you okay?” he asks, tentatively coming closer to slap Minghao on the back as he hiccups on a laugh, “what did I say?”

“Sorry, I don’t know, it’s nothing, it’s just–” Minghao interrupts himself, brushing tears from his eyes and trying to calm his breathing in order to quell the giggle fit he can feel threatening to burst out again. “Yeah, it did suck. No one ever put it this plainly though. But just, yeah. Thanks.”

When Minghao can finally look up at Wonwoo he’s smiling, his hand still on Minghao’s back, light and warm and Minghao smiles back, a warmth in his chest threatening to spill on his cheeks as Wonwoo holds his gaze; and there’s something there, something pulling at Minghao and he wants to reach out, reach out and smooth the wild hair, drive his fingers over the hard line’s of Wonwoo’s face and – and Minghao takes a step back, out of Wonwoo’s grasp, and he watches as Wonwoo’s hand falls at his side, fingers curling as if to retain some of the warmth.

“I guess we should get to it?” Minghao says hesitantly, gaze not quite landing on Wonwoo.

“Yeah, I guess so. I still don’t know what we’re looking for, though.”

“I do,” Minghao says, marching himself towards one of the shelf lining the farthest wall. “It should be somewhere in there.”

He can hear Wonwoo join him as he takes out box after box, and he can feel him stand close; too close, and Minghao bumps into him as he gets the last box out.

“Sorry,” Wonwoo says, grabbing Minghao’s arm to steady him and there’s nothing sorry in his face, lips quirked in a half smile, a bright glint in his eyes.

“It’s okay,” Minghao says, averting his gaze as he sits down crossed legs on the floor, opening the lid of the first box. Wonwoo sits on the opposite side, staring at Minghao who pointedly ignores him, just as he ignores the pull, still there in his chest.

“These are letters from Joshua’s time,” he says, not looking up. “We need to find if anything references Joshua’s shadows, or the murder itself, what could have happened after.”

“Alright,” Wonwoo says gamely, reaching into the box for a bundle of letters. Minghao takes one himself, and as they start to read in silence, Minghao allows himself to steal glances through his fringe. Wonwoo’s hair have fallen over his brow as he bends over the letters, lashes drawing stunted shadows on his cheekbones, and sometimes his lips part, mouthing the words on the page as if he was reading aloud. And soon Minghao stares more than he reads; stares at the way Wonwoo’s slender fingers cradle the brittle paper, how he flicks his hair back, sometimes, when it gets into his eyes, how his brow furrows over certain passages, how others make him smile.

Sometimes he looks up and Minghao snaps his head down to his own letters, his bundle decreasing much slower than Wonwoo’s own. He doesn’t see the half-smile on Wonwoo’s lips then, nor the way he raises one eyebrow, going back to his letters with an amused shake of his head.

“Oh,” Wonwoo says then, breaking the studious silence that had fallen over them. “Listen to that bit,” he says, extending a leg against the side of the box as he massages his thigh, holding a yellowed letter in one hand.

“ _Dearest_ _Minnie,”_ Wonwoo starts, putting way more theatricality in his voice than the letter probably warrants, _“I swear to god,_ _if your brother sends me one more_ _love_ _poem through the post I’ll have him killed. You know I can do that, and I’ll probably be doing a service to humankind too, because someone capable of writing such_ _awful rubbish is undoubtedly capable of much worse and shouldn’t be left alive_ _to thrive_ _. So either you stop him or I do, but I’m pretty confident you w_ _ill not_ _like_ _how I go about it_ _.”_

Wonwoo stops, lifting his head to stare at Minghao with a beatific smile plastered on his face.

“How does that help us?” Minghao sighs, and if it wasn’t the reaction Wonwoo expected he doesn’t show it.

“It doesn’t,” Wonwoo says, eyes drifting back to the page. “It’s just kinda funny. You know, like, fun? It’s spelled–”

“I know what fun is, thanks,” Minghao rolls his eyes, opening yet another letter from the bundle in his lap.

“Are you sure? When’s the last time you did something just for the hell of it?”

“Look, I do fun stuff all the time okay?”

“Sure, mister I have a huge stick up my butt.”

“I do not have a stick up anywhere.”

“Sure.”

“Wonwoo,” Minghao warns, glaring straight at the offending party, who’s looking back at him with a shit eating grin and Minghao liked him better when he was unconscious. But it’s not true, he thinks immediately, it’s not, and the longer he stares the harder it is to deny it; he likes him, just as he is, fiery and harsh but strangely soft sometimes; Wonwoo hadn’t let go of Minghao’s hand when he’d woken up screaming, had listened when he’d needed him too, had let him see the most vulnerable parts of himself.

“Do I have something on my face?” Wonwoo asks then, snapping Minghao out of his thoughts but his voice sounds strangely subdued, almost hesitant, and Minghao doesn’t miss the way Wonwoo’s gaze flicks to his lips as he darts his tongue to lick them wet, doesn’t miss the shift in the atmosphere surrounding them, a tension that didn’t used to be there, not like this, electricity coursing over his skin. And so, he does something just for the hell of it.

Wonwoo doesn’t flinch when Minghao reaches over the box of letters between them, doesn’t resist when Minghao grabs him by the collar of his shirt, yanking him forward; doesn’t push back when Minghao slots their mouths together and kisses him like a man starved. Both of his hands finds their place on Minghao’s nape, grazing the soft skin there, inching upwards to tangle in Minghao’s hair and he brings him closer, tongue tracing Minghao’s lips as they part on a sigh. The box of letters is shoved aside with a kick, thumping against the wall and whatever had taken possession of Minghao vanishes with the sound; he gasps, breaking away from Wonwoo who looks at him with wide eyes, lips spit slick and shiny.

“Fuck, shit, I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t complaining,” Wonwoo says softly, bringing a hand to Minghao’s wrist as if he was afraid he’d bolt. But Minghao’s rooted there, staring at him, lips slightly parted on words that won’t come out, his heart beating too fast against his ribs.

“I guess I was wrong, you can be fun sometimes,” Wonwoo adds and Minghao shoves him with a whispered _fuck you_ , Wonwoo laughing, and the malaise that had threatened to fall on them disperses just like that, in Wonwoo’s laugh and Minghao’s coy shyness. Wonwoo falls silent again, licking his lips, a gesture that Minghao follows with nervous eyes; he knows what those lips taste like now, knows the answer to that question he’d asked himself ages ago, as he’d watched Wonwoo sleep his death-like sleep, _who will he turn out to be?_ Another missing piece, it seemed, and Wonwoo’s gaze falls to the box they’d kicked away in their haste to get at each other.

“Should we – should we keep looking?”

Minghao looks back at the same box and nods wearily, the gravity of their situation catching up to him in a single second.

“I guess we should.”

Wonwoo smiles something small, brushing against Minghao as he leans towards the box to drag it back to them. They sit side by side this time, a spontaneous gesture that has them sharing light touches each time they reach into the box, a pile of discarded letters and journals growing on either side of them. They lose track of time, here; the room has no windows to show them the sky, no clock to count the hours. But it’s fine, like this, shoulder to shoulder, the rustle of paper the only sound to be heard.

Until Wonwoo gasps, and elbows Minghao to get his attention.

“I may have found something. For real this time.”

“Show me,” Minghao says, Wonwoo passing him the journal he’d been reading with careful hands, the yellowed pages barely holding together, the ink almost faded. Minghao lowers it in his lap, Wonwoo pressing against him to read the words all over again.

 _There is so much terrible things we must do. So much terrible things we have done. This one I undertake alone, with grief in my heart. I know_ _all_ _that will come after me must be doomed, just as I_ _now_ _doom myself._ _But we have talked much, and there is no solution in sight, nothing to stop that terrible dread falling upon us. We can already feel the creeping darkness, we already know that we cannot hold it back while it is still part of this world. Thus it must be sealed, and we know the most powerful vessel that must hold it._ _I am marching to a war that will consume the last of my life, and all the lives that will come after mine._ _Yet it must be do_ _ne_ _, despite all the sorrow, all the pain it will bring. I am sorry. There is no other choice. I will swallow the corruption, and carve its prison in_ _to_ _my flesh._

Minghao stares at the words, reading them over and over again. He can feel Wonwoo at his side, leaning into him, peering at the yellow page and when he speaks his voice is close, so close to his ear; Minghao can feel his breath fanning over his skin and Wonwoo speaks in hushed whispers, as if there was something there they shouldn’t wake up.

“This is it, isn’t it? This guy, he’s – ‘all that will come after me must be doomed’ – that’s me, right? Me and my father and my grandmother and, and everyone else, since he did what he did.”

“Since he did what he had to,” Minghao whispers back, and there’s an inexplicable sadness unfurling in his chest for this man of centuries past faced with an impossible choice, for all the lives he’d doomed to protect countless more. For Wonwoo next to him, gaunt face and feverish eyes, and could Minghao have done the same? Could he have sacrificed himself and all his progeny to save strangers from a danger he didn’t fully comprehend? _I’d have kept looking_ , Minghao knows, _I’d have kept looking until all turned dark._

“We need to show this to Joshua,” he says, shifting to get up as he tucks the journal under his arm. Wonwoo follows him, and the silence that falls over them as they walk to the door is heavy with unshared thoughts, the words on the page echoing in their mind. As they reach the staircase Wonwoo slips his hand in Minghao’s, who holds it tight without a second thought. Minghao knows about burdens too heavy to carry alone, knows about faded words on yellowed pages and the pain they can bring. He glances back at Wonwoo but he’s not looking at him, gaze lowered, face grim; there’s nothing left of his earlier mirth, of the playfulness that had found a way through the darkness in his eyes. Their respite hadn’t last, the events had caught up to them, fast, too fast.

When they emerge in the corridor they can barely see where they’re stepping; night has fallen, escorted by a light rain that taps against the window at the far end. Minghao doesn’t turn on any lamps, guiding a stumbling Wonwoo to his office door. It stayed ajar, the ray of light bleeding from the opening telling them Joshua must still be there. Minghao pushes the door open, finding him bent over his own desk, books opened before him, some he must have carted from the library. He doesn’t notice them right away, disheveled hair falling into his face, hands smoothing down the pages before him. Minghao hesitantly clears his throat, Joshua’s gaze snapping to him and he looks harried, a feverish glint in his eyes, dry lips parting on a surprised gasp as if he’d forgotten where he was, had forgotten about Minghao, Wonwoo, anything else besides the books before him and the thoughts in his mind.

“You alright?” Minghao asks, stepping fully into the room.

“Yeah,” Joshua says, a weak smile on his lips, “I just – I was trying to find information on, on the shadows, and the rune, you know.”

“Found anything interesting?” Minghao asks as he steps towards the desk, Wonwoo in tow. Joshua watches him put down the journal on the tabletop but doesn’t ask about it, gazes flitting back to Minghao’s face.

“I don’t know? Maybe. It’s all very confused, and sometimes contradictory.”

He sounds hesitant, like Minghao had never heard him, and this worries him more than he’d care to admit; at least one of them should know what they’re doing, at least one of them should believe they’ll succeed.

“Maybe this will help, then,” Minghao says as he opens the journal to the right page, turning it over for Joshua to read. As the silence stretches while Joshua peruses the page, Minghao sits in the chair Wonwoo had dragged there earlier, the latter perching himself on the armrest, weight leaning into Minghao. They wait, watching as Joshua’s face grows brighter with excitement, and soon he looks up to them, finger pointing at a line on the paper.

“‘ _Carve its prison into my flesh_ ’, I think he meant that literally,” he says, turning then to Wonwoo, “the birthmark you mentioned, it’s not a birthmark, it’s a scar,” and Joshua grows yet more animated, pushing to the side a slew of document to dig out a small volume.

“From what I can tell, the primary use of the rune was to call upon the yew tree in incantations, channel its power into one being that would be considered a vessel.”

“He mentioned that, a vessel,” Minghao interrupts, leaning forward into his chair.

“Yes, he did,” Joshua nods, “ _‘we know the most powerful vessel that must hold it’_ and here he meant himself, a human body channeling the yew tree. But what if it could mean something else, too? What if it could mean the yew tree itself?”

“You mean–”

“Yes,” Joshua says, and there’s something in his eyes, something of a sadness that wasn’t there a moment ago, something that wakes a creeping dread in Minghao’s guts, “You know, they used to bury witches in elm trees. And I think – We need to bury the monster. Like I was buried myself.”

“Wait,” Wonwoo says, standing up from his place on the chair and he doesn’t look convinced, brows furrowed, hands opened before him as if he wished to physically restrain Joshua’s words.

“If it was this simple, why wouldn’t they have done it already, instead of sacrificing some poor sucker?”

“They couldn’t,” Joshua says, “they couldn’t do it without me.”

“What do you mean?” Wonwoo asks, and the sadness in Joshua’s eyes resolves itself in the deepest grief, laid out on his handsome face and as Minghao stares the dread in his stomach grows, grows until it pushes thorns under his skin and he knows what’s coming, he knows what Joshua is going to say.

“The shadows were mine, they obeyed me and no one else, just like Jeonghan’s shadows will only follow him. They didn’t have any power over them, the couldn’t lay them to rest. So when you can’t kill a monster, you trap it, and they did, they trapped it in a jail where it grew yet more heinous. But it’s me that it hates, for what I did to it, what I made it do. So, it needs – it needs to be me. I need to end it myself, give the monster what it seeks so it can finally rest.”

“What is seeks–”

“I should go back to the yew tree.”

“Joshua, you can’t–” Minghao starts as he grips the armrests of the chair, knuckles whitening, but he cannot finish; there’s a loud crash at the door and when they turn Jeonghan is standing there, a broken mug at his feet spilling a dark liquid.

“Jeonghan–” Joshua starts, getting up from his chair.

“You can’t do this,” Jeonghan says, voice strangled and tears are already swimming in his wide eyes. He wipes them angrily with his sleeve, stepping into the room. Minghao tucks at Wonwoo’s shirt to get him to stand back and he does, both inching towards the wall.

“I must,” Joshua says, taking the few steps that separates him from Jeonghan, but his raised hands are swatted away, Jeonghan clenching his jaw.

“We don’t even know if it will work!”

“It will,” Joshua says, voice placating. “I know it will. This is the only way.”

“After everything, I – I can’t, this isn’t why I brought you back.”

“I think it is,” Joshua says, and the sadness in his voice is almost too much to bear.

“But I love you,” Jeonghan says, and it sound so weak, so pitiful, Minghao can see him crumbling before his eyes and his chest constricts; he grabs at Wonwoo’s wrist next to him, too tightly he knows, fingers digging into his flesh and each breaths he takes feels like fire.

“I love you, too,” Joshua is saying, and this time Jeonghan doesn’t push him away when he embraces him. “But I… I can’t let people suffer for my mistakes.”

“Are you sure it’s the only choice?” Jeonghan asks quietly, and Joshua doesn’t answer, only nodding against his shoulder.

  
  


**4** **.**

Jeonghan asks for a week. It’s too short, too short a time to do all that they couldn’t, but long enough that sorrow carves itself a home in his flesh, in his bones, and Minghao can barely stand seeing him like this, seeing the brave smiles he puts on, belied by the grief swimming in his eyes. But they all play their part, and for a while it seems like nothing is happening. Nothing, despite Wonwoo locking himself in the archives every night, looking for something, anything that could hint at another way. Despite Minghao turning his library upside down because maybe they missed something, maybe the solution is right there in front of their very eyes and they just can’t see it. Nothing, despite Jeonghan’s loathed resignation, him and Joshua locked in a cycle of bitter anger, unbridled love, and the deepest grief.

Minghao errs like a ghost in his own house, helpless and lost, the hollow within him growing, swallowing everything there is; he’d thought he’d be safe, here, that nothing could reach him, and yet. He stops at the library door which stands slightly ajar and the room is dark when he peers inside; night has fallen, and he knows it is the last one, the last of the six nights of respite they’d carved out. Caught in his thoughts Minghao almost misses the dark shape sitting on the couch but it shifts, and Minghao jolts, hand flying to the light switch.

“What are you doing here?” Minghao asks, Joshua blinking up at him, forcing a smile to his lips.

“I just – we fought again,” he says simply, and Minghao steps into the room, hesitating but a second before sitting beside him.

“You have to understand him.”

“I do. I wished he understood me.”

“He does, that’s why you’re not just locked up somewhere.”

Joshua smiles, something short-lived that turns too soon into a quiver. Minghao averts his gaze, letting him regain his composure before speaking again.

“If you – if you want to stop, no one will judge you.”

“I will,” Joshua says, and the familiar exchange leaves a sour taste in Minghao’s mouth.

“I don’t want you to go,” Minghao says then, and the acknowledgment of the feelings weighing upon his chest leaves him breathless. “I wasted so much and... I thought I could– we barely had time to make it better. I need you to tell me more, you can’t, you can’t leave now.”

“It’s okay,” Joshua says, but it’s not, it’s really not. “All that you need you already have.”

Minghao looks down at his hands, folded sagely in his lap, looks over the mess he made of the library, looks at Joshua, finally, at his handsome profile and stormy eyes.

“I’ll miss you,” he says then, because it’s true. Yet these words are much too simple for the feelings behind them, for the void Joshua will leave behind, and Minghao struggles to imagine what it will be like without him, struggles to remember what it was like, before he happened.

Joshua smiles then, so much sadness carried in such a gesture, and he squeezes Minghao’s hand once, a flitting gesture that leaves him hollow.

“I should be dead,” Joshua says after a short silence, “I was buried, and it should have stayed that way. Things are getting back in order.”

Minghao listens and his chest feels empty; there’s no heart beating against his ribs, no breaths filling his lungs. It feels all too false; the night light falling through the windows, the books haphazardly strewn upon the floor, Joshua next to him, pale and unreachable. There’s a veil in front of Minghao’s eyes, one he cannot reach through.

“Joshua–”

“I must go talk to him,” Joshua says, gently interrupting Minghao who can only nod. “I will talk to you later, yeah?”

Minghao assents, watches Joshua as he leaves the room and this was the last time, he realizes, this was the last time they’ll ever sit together like this, under the soft glow of the ceiling light, night spilling through the window. There’s a sob in his chest but it seems paltry, much too weak an embodiment of the dismal grief unfurling under his heart. So Minghao swallows hard, clenches his jaw and no pitiful tears will fall as he leaves the couch, closing the door behind him after a last look at what seems now like a sepulcher for days gone by.

Minghao finds the path to the reserve, the house quiet around him at if it knew what was unfurling within its walls. Quietly he goes down the stairs, quieter still he pushes open the old door to the archives and the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling is lighted, drawing elongated shadows upon the floor. The room seems empty at first; there is no sounds, no one he can find between the shelves until he reaches the far wall and there he is, seated cross legged in the corner, a book opened in his lap. Wonwoo doesn’t notice Minghao’s presence and so Minghao steals this moment to watch him quietly; watch the way his hair fall into his face, how his fingers gently brush the pages, how his profile cuts a sharp line against the dark panel of the wall behind him. And then, Minghao takes a step forward, startling Wonwoo out of his reading.

“Oh, it’s you,” Wonwoo says, and in his surprise he looks almost pleased, before a shadow falls over his features. “Did something happen?”

“No,” Minghao says, bridging the distance between them to sit next to Wonwoo, knees brought up against his chest. “I didn’t feel like being alone.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“What are you reading?” Minghao asks, and Wonwoo looks down at the book in his lap as if he’d forgotten it was there.

“I’ve been– I’ve been looking for a solution but I couldn’t find anything and then I just… I couldn’t bear going back upstairs. I just stayed here and took whatever was there. This is actually really boring.”

Minghao peers down at the page but no words register, his eyes going out of focus, the ink blurring to dark smudges. He sighs, lets his head lull back against the wall and his gaze lands on a broken cobweb hanging from the ceiling.

”You’re hiding from us,” he says then, and he can hear Wonwoo shift next to him, can feel him brush against his side.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“You know why. What do you say to a guy who’s gonna sacrifice himself for you? What do you say to the people he leaves behind?”

Minghao looks down at Wonwoo and he has closed his book, raised his knees to rest his hands upon them, back hunched over. Minghao has the urge to run his fingers against the bare skin of his nape, to lose them in his tangled hair. He closes his eyes instead, and it passes, shapes dancing against the back of his eyelids.

“No one is blaming you.”

“That’s nice, but I don’t believe it.”

“He does it because he must.” _There is so much terrible things we must do._ “Because he’s looking for redemption.” _So much terrible things we have done._

When there’s no answer from Wonwoo, Minghao cracks an eye open to look at him and Wonwoo has never looked so small, hunched over on himself, and this time Minghao doesn’t resist; he pulls him by the shoulder, pulls him into himself, against his side, against his chest.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s happening,” Wonwoo says, voice strangely faraway, “it doesn’t feel like tomorrow, he’ll walk to his death. It doesn’t feel like we’re gonna do nothing about it.”

“I thought you’d be angry,” Minghao says then, and Wonwoo looks up at him, haunting eyes full of a conflicted sorrow.

“I should be, shouldn’t I? Because of him my whole family’s been cursed for generations. Because of what he did we could never be happy.”

“Why aren’t you, then?”

“I don’t know,” Wonwoo shrugs, looking back down. “I’m tired. It would be easier if there was someone to hate but– I’ve been angry my whole life and now that I found a culprit I just... it’s not worth it. No one wanted this. Everyone suffered. It’s just, it’s just a big fucking mess, isn’t it? It’s just so fucking terrible, everything is. And I’m exhausted. I don’t want to be angry. I don’t want to be sad anymore. But sometimes it feels like it’s all that there is.”

Minghao almost laughs at their situation, at the quiet despair filling his lungs, the same one he can feel tailing each of Wonwoo’s words.

“It really feels like shit, uh,” he says instead, and when Wonwoo looks back at him Minghao wants to kiss him, find there the warmth that he needs but he can’t, staring down at Wonwoo’s perfect face. This feels wrong, too easy an escape from the sorrow that grips them. And maybe Wonwoo feels the same, gaze drifting to Minghao’s lips before he averts his eyes, shifting so his back rests against Minghao’s chest and he cannot look at him anymore. This they can do, fleeting touches that holds no weight, a shared silence bursting with unsaid words, heavy gazes filled with their frustration, their doubts, their fears.

 _I_ _t must be past midnight,_ Minghao thinks then, and a restlessness fills him; he must act, he must stop simply waiting for the inevitable. It will come, sure, but he can decide how it will happen. And he can’t be losing their last hours hiding. He stirs, Wonwoo lifting from his chest to look back to him with a question in his face.

“Let’s do something.”

“Like what?” Wonwoo asks, sitting up straighter so he doesn’t have to crane his neck to look at Minghao.

“I don’t know. Do you want to eat? Let’s eat.”

Minghao knows he sounds febrile, and Wonwoo looks at him with an eyebrow raised, biting his cheek.

“Okay”, he says eventually, rising to his feet, and Minghao is suddenly grateful that he’ll let him, let him hide his helplessness under meaningless gestures, under empty performances of normalcy. Minghao follows him towards the door and up the stairs, staring at the back of his head and he wonders, then, what it is he truly feels for this strange man he barely knows. It had been easy, to fit him against himself, to find space for him, it had felt natural, to touch and to kiss. There was the pulling, the soft warmth breathing under his heart, pressing against his ribs, and it should have been enough, yet Minghao cannot help but wonder.

What if he had just needed someone who understood, someone who knew what it was like to be the last of a cursed line. What if he had just needed comfort, a hand to hold, someone to look at him and see more than what he was. What if these feelings were to disappear, disappear completely once Wonwoo would simply be a man, a man for whom they had to sacrifice so much.

“You okay?” Wonwoo asks then, snapping Minghao back to reality. And Minghao stares for a split second, at his dark eyes and thin face, looking there for an answer he doesn’t find.

“Yeah,” he says eventually, forcing a smile to his lips. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Wonwoo says before stepping into the kitchen. Minghao follows and he was right about the time, he notes, the clock hanging on the wall pointing to thirty five past midnight and he trudges to the counter as Wonwoo falls in a chair, gathering what he needs to make the same ginger tea he’d prepared when Wonwoo had first woken up. It’s when the spicy smell of ginger starts to rise that they hear footsteps, breaking the soft silence that had fallen over them, and when Minghao looks over his shoulder Jeonghan is standing on the threshold, Joshua right behind him. He looks exhausted, dark bruises under red-rimmed eyes and it might be tear tracks on his cheeks but Minghao doesn’t ask, simply turns back to the stove to put more water to boil.

Joshua and Jeonghan sit silently at the table, Wonwoo looking at them with wide, worried eyes but Joshua is smiling at him, something frail, crumbling edges and sad eyes but it’s there all the same and Wonwoo relaxes if only for a while, hunching over the table to play with the mug Minghao deposits before him.

“You guys hungry?” Minghao asks, and Jeonghan shrugs, leaning into Joshua who dragged his chair next to him.

“Guess I could eat.”

Minghao nods, turning back to start on a simple stir fry and as he cooks, the smell of spices mixing with the ginger of the tea, he hears a conversation slowly start behind him, stunted and quiet at first, words swallowed by the noise of the frying vegetables in front of him. Soon there’s the bark of a laugh, cut short as if a sacrilege had been made, and when he turns Wonwoo has his hand clasped over his mouth, but Joshua is smiling, a real smile this time, and Wonwoo’s hand slowly lowers just as Jeonghan leans over the table to take his mug.

“I’m stealing this as collateral,” he’s saying, “for laughing at his awful jokes.”

He sounds jaded, but Minghao can see the small smile tugging at the corner of his lips, and by the time he’s serving them steaming plates of stir fried noodles, Wonwoo is engaged in explaining the very concept of artificial intelligence to an increasingly confused Joshua, while Jeonghan interjects with absurdly false information that Wonwoo runs with, seemingly delighted at the increasingly distressed questions Joshua is asking him. When Minghao sits with them at the table Jeonghan holds his gaze and there’s gratitude in his eyes, despite the sadness Minghao can find underneath; they smile at each other, Jeonghan looking away as they all start eating and it’s a little too loud, a little too frantic, maybe, but it’s the last night, it’s the last night and they’ll take all that they can.

It ends as it started, quiet, wistful. Jeonghan has leaned his head against Joshua’s shoulder, idly picking at the remains of food in his plate. Wonwoo has rested his chin in his hand, sleep making his eyelids heavy but still he won’t let it claim him, and Minghao stares at each of them in turn, gaze landing on Joshua, on his faraway stare and on the hand he keeps on Jeonghan’s own. Minghao wants to reach him, say something but there is no words for the hollow that he feels and so he remains quiet, the silence that falls over them not entirely unwelcome. They share in each other’s quiet presence for a while more, Minghao standing first to gather the dirty plates as Wonwoo vaguely helps, and Jeonghan stands then, waving goodnight, an absent Joshua following behind him.

“It went better than I thought,” Wonwoo says when they are both gone, drying the plates Minghao hands him before putting them away in the wrong cabinet.

“Once you made a decision, it gets easier,” Minghao says, not bothering to correct Wonwoo’s tidying.

“Yeah, I guess,” the latter says, putting away the last plate and leaning against the counter.

“Still. I thought– I don’t know. I thought I wouldn’t fit. I thought at least one person would cry.”

Minghao smiles, brittle at the edges.

“I think we all did our crying. All that is left is getting through with it.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo sighs. “I guess.”

They stare at each other now, alone there in the dim kitchen, and there’s this warmth again, this pull between them, Wonwoo making an aborted gesture towards Minghao who averts his gaze, looking at the tiled floor of the kitchen when he speaks again.

“Wonwoo, I can’t… I can’t do this,” Minghao says, words burning on their way out.

“Do what?” Wonwoo asks, his voice soft, and Minghao looks up at him; he owes him this, at least. Wonwoo must know what is coming, it’s in the dark of his eyes, the downturn of his mouth.

“Whatever is going on here,” Minghao says, gesturing vaguely between them. “I can’t do it. Not after… Not after what’s gonna happen to Joshua. Not after Jeonghan will find himself alone.”

Wonwoo stares at him, silent for a long while, and then he nods, slowly, and something closes off in him; the darkness is back in his eyes, cold and indifferent, growing vines between Minghao’s ribs and suddenly it’s hard to breathe.

“I understand,” Wonwoo says, voice distant, and even if he truly does it doesn’t make this any better; the hollow in Minghao’s chest grows deeper still, chipping at his heart, brittle ribs curving over an empty cathedral. He stares as Wonwoo takes a step forward before reconsidering, standing still, too still under the soft glow of the ceiling light and it’s unfair, how pretty he can be.

“I won’t fight you,” Wonwoo says, and there’s sadness behind the hollow tone of his voice. He glances at the dark corridor then, and Minghao almost reaches out to stop him as he steps towards it. Maybe Wonwoo sees his hesitation, maybe he wavers himself, but he stops for a split second, looking back with a wistful smile Minghao knows he’ll learn to hate.

“I’ll just – I’ll stay in the library. Just come get me when it’s time.”

And he leaves, before Minghao can take back his words, before he can reach out, touch him and erase the hurt, the sorrow, before he can stop the hollow within him from swallowing the last of his light.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Move over angst here comes the fluff!  
> Maybe I wrote this chapter listening exclusively to 80s remixes of popular songs but what of it.  
> I hope you enjoy it!! Thank you so much for reading this far I love you all!

**1.**

It should be night, Minghao thinks, watching as the soft light of early morning bathes his room in bright tones. Some things aren’t meant to happen in the daylight; it makes them too real, too sharp, and his gaze falls to Jeonghan as he bends to light a candle. Minghao stares at his blank expression, at the hard set of his jaw, at his stiff, perfunctory gestures. When Jeonghan looks back to him his gaze is emotionless, something snuffed out in him Minghao isn’t sure he’ll ever get back.

“What are you doing, just standing there?” Jeonghan asks in a flat tone and Minghao hesitates before fully stepping into the room. It feels like he’s crossing to another domain, one where they have accepted what is, one where it is not possible to turn back. The room is cold, the curtains fluttering on the open window and the air smells crisp, the streets yet quiet beyond their little house.

“Do you have it?”

Jeonghan has stepped closer and Minghao nods, holding out the knife clutched in his right hand. The blade is clean now, catching the light, the finely carved bone handle smooth and cold against his palm. Jeonghan stares at the knife without moving to touch it and he must remember what it was used for, how it felt sinking in his own flesh, how it looked stained in his own blood. But it was in another life, in another dream, and the one they’re weaving now has the taste of nightmares.

“Good,” Jeonghan says, gesturing for Minghao to leave it upon the desk. There’s other objects there, amulets he made out of Joshua and Wonwoo’s hair, blooms the stole from the city’s botanical gardens, candles and censers full of lavender they will light later, and Minghao stares at their complicated shape, knowing the sleep they’ll bring for Joshua will be the last one. He’s still staring when Jeonghan gently tugs at his sleeve, bringing his attention back to himself.

“We should get everyone,” he says, and if his voice is steady Minghao can see the distress in his eyes, the sorrow he does his best to keep at bay. Minghao clasps the hand on his sleeve, holds it for a second before letting go, nodding.

“I’ll go get Wonwoo,” he says, and he turns before he can see the tears welling in Jeonghan’s eyes. It’s easier, to focus on the task at hand. Bury his feelings under a resolute focus, just a list of things to go through and affect has no place in this.

The door to the library is closed and Minghao knocks before gingerly pushing it open when there’s no answer. Wonwoo is laying on the sunken couch, legs propped up against the armrest and head buried in old cushions. He’s sleeping, it seems, and Minghao steps quietly towards him. There’s a thin book opened on his belly _; Make bright the arrows_ the title reads, and the words float unbidden to Minghao’s mind. _Make bright the arrows, gather the shields: conquest narrows the peaceful fields_ and war had never felt so intimate.

Wonwoo stirs, jaw clench and brow furrowed and Minghao hesitates before lighting a hand to his shoulder, shaking him softly. Wonwoo’s eyes snap open immediately and he sits up, rubbing at his face, the book tumbling in his lap.

“Did I sleep long?”

“I don’t know,” Minghao says, not really knowing where to look. “I came in just now.”

“Oh, okay,” Wonwoo answers, and he must feel the same discomfort, gaze flitting to Minghao before falling to the book in his lap, a safer place to stare at.

“Did you dream?” Minghao asks then, and Wonwoo hesitates before answering.

“No. I mean, I did, but… I think it knows. It didn’t show me anything but there was this… this feeling, I guess?”

“What kind of feeling?”

Wonwoo shrugs, tracing patterns over the book cover with the tip of his finger.

“I think it– I think it wants it to end, too. It wasn’t angry, it was… restless. I think it’s waiting.”

Minghao nods, gaze drifting back to Wonwoo and it’s almost easy to look at him, when he doesn’t look back. His messy hair curl against his temple as he absently stare at his book, neck gracefully bent towards his lap and Minghao can see the knots of his spine, the soft hair at his nape. He snaps his gaze away as the urge to reach out and touch becomes close to overwhelming, grief and yearning curling miserably against his spine.

“Jeonghan– Jeonghan is ready. I came to get you.”

“So we’re really going through with this,” Wonwoo says and he looks back this time, the storm in his eyes raining grey shadows.

“Yes,” Minghao says, the solemnity of his tone surprising even himself, “we are.”

“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo whispers then, and Minghao forgets the words exchanged but a few hours earlier, forgets about the hurt and the sadness, about standing under the soft glow of the kitchen lights, watching Wonwoo leave. He grabs him by the wrist, tugs and there’s no resistance, Wonwoo falling against Minghao, fitting himself against his chest and Minghao keeps him there, safe and warm.

“It’s not your fault. I told you, no one blames you. There’s no– there’s no enemy, here. We’re just – we’re doing what he have to”, Minghao says, wishing his voice didn’t crack on the last words. But Wonwoo’s nodding against his chest, catching a few breaths to steady himself as he disentangles his body from Minghao, taking a step back and his warmth is instantly missed.

“I– Thank you. I’m ready too, I think.”

“Okay,” Minghao says, forcing a smile to his lips as he lets go of Wonwoo’s wrist, turning to walk back to his bedroom. Wonwoo falls into step behind him, not quite close enough, not quite warm enough to bridge the distance Minghao can feel growing between them, knowing he’s the one who put it there. He was always good at this, he knows, walls of ice and the hollow in his chest, swallowing all. And he had try, he’d try so hard to keep close, keep safe the ones that had managed to cross over and yet it hadn’t been enough; once again he must watch, watch as adored souls fall away from him.

When they step into the bedroom Joshua is already there, seated on the edge of the bed, Jeonghan next to him and they speak in hushed whispers, hands clasped and heads tilted towards one another. They break apart when they see them enter, Jeonghan’s fragile mask showing yet more cracks. Joshua gets up, keeping Jeonghan’s hand in his as if he couldn’t bear to be apart.

“Is this it?” he asks, and Minghao nods stiffly, Wonwoo shuffling to a stop beside him.

“Okay,” Joshua says then, looking down at the hand in his. He’s steeling himself, clenching his jaw, drawing a breath and when he looks up his gaze has changed – older, colder, a resolve that didn’t use to be there.

“Let’s go, then,” and his words shift the air. They don’t need to speak, each knowing their place – they’ve rehearsed this, poring over ancient books and Joshua’s own knowledge, crafting together a liturgy of disparate elements that will bring them the end they need but do not want.

They light the censers, the fragrant smell of lavender quick to spill into the room, and as Joshua, having tugged his shirt off, lays down on one side of the bed, Minghao gathers the hyssop blooms he’d painstakingly gathered, arranging upon Joshua’s golden skin the purple flowers that will mark him as a sacrifice. Wonwoo, laid down next to him, is strewn in anemones, valerian and chamomile blooms, the air growing heavy with their scent. Jeonghan steps forward, crowning them both in mallows, the last wreaths he’ll ever weave for them.

Wonwoo and Joshua link hands, Jeonghan tying their wrist together with a garland of mistletoe, each of the amulets in each other’s palms. It’s then that Minghao notices the two flowers resting above Joshua’s head, the red of the astilbe striking against the white of the asphodel. _I will still be waiting,_ they’re saying. _My regrets follow you to the grave._ Minghao averts his gaze then, swallowing around the lump in his throat and now is not the time for tears, he knows, and he goes to assume his position at the foot of the bed. He’s the priest of their little altar and as he folds his hands in a complicated gesture against his chest his voice rises in a plainchant, the words sung in the old tongue. They fill the air, these words, slither in each corner of the room, wound themselves around their heavy limbs, curl upon Joshua’s naked flesh above which Jeonghan has raised the bone-handled knife.

They wait, then. They wait until sleep has claimed both of the men on the bed, their chest raising and falling on the same rhythm, their breaths quiet. They wait until their slumber deepens, deepens to a death-like stillness and Minghao’s chant changes then, the words growing in strength, commanding rather than coaxing, his voice louder, a cold edge to each syllable and the power that rides on their tail isn’t entirely his own; he can feel it, rising from the bowels of the earth, far, far under his feet, surging through his body like a spear he unseathes on the world. And then, Jeonghan lowers the knife upon the perfect skin, and carves eihaz above Joshua’s heart.

  
  


**2.**

_J_ _oshua_ _opens his eyes on a purple sky, a desert of dried earth expanding like a_ _n ocean of dust_ _before his eyes. There’s a mountain range in the distance, reaching towards the cloudless sky where no sun shines; yet it isn’t dark, and he knows there is no night here, just as there is no day._ _He looks down and there’s a hand in his, their wrists_ _linked_ _by a garland of mistletoe and he remembers what i_ _t_ _means; no violence shall happen in this place, and his brother had hung it upon his walls when Joshua had come, yet_ _blood had flown all the same_ _._ _The hand in his is cold, colder than his_ _own_ _had been in death, and when he looks up the eyes that stare back are entirely_ _black_ _,_ _full_ _a liquid darkness that moves and shimmers, and he knows, then; this isn’t Wonwoo, this is the shadow that inhabits him._

 _He doesn’t feel any fear, though, doesn’t feel any of the terror Minghao had described;_ _j_ _ust a vast sorrow, a grief like no other that unfurls in his chest and he is sorry, he is, holding the corruption in his hand and he knows how it must have suffered, how agonizing it must have been, when its nature had been twisted, when the hatred_ _had spilled into its being until it was t_ _ortured_ _to ruins._ _Joshua stands up then, pulling the corruption behind him and it follows him quietly, its feet soundless upon the ground, its hand weightless in Joshua’s own._ _They walk, until the ground under their feet shifts from dust to bones, from dried earth to dark moss. Broken skulls stare at them with empty sockets and a cruel_ _grin_ _, smash_ _ed_ _femurs trip Joshua’s feet and he knows he isn’t welcomed_ _here_ _yet he keeps going, keeps going until the distorted shapes of heavy branches shadow his path._

_He stops at the foot of the tree, amongst enormous roots and there’s a hollow there, an empty hollow edged by broken bones and dry moss and he knows what used to lay there._

_“I used to be dead once,” he says, to the tree or to the silent corruption still holding his hand, cold as winter winds. “Or – not entirely dead; I still knew the passage of time, I still knew the grief nesting in my body._ _Once the hatred and the anger faded I was left with nothing, and I spent centuries there, dead and undead,_ _waiting.”_

 _T_ _here’s a wheezing like an intake of breath and Joshua turns to the corruption, sees the warring in its dark eyes,_ _the hard set of its jaw._

 _“I know you hate me,” Joshua says, “I know I’m the one who made you like this. You were left in prisons of flesh where your hatred only grew and you devoured_ _them all_ _,_ _and you were hated and feared in turn.”_

_The corruption opens its mouth as if to speak but no words come out, only a rasping, breezy sound and its hand in Joshua’s tightens, fingers burying in his flesh, nails drawing blood._

_“This must cease. I must break the circle,” Joshua says_ _simply_ _._ _Th_ _e corruption opens_ _it_ _s mouth on a silent scream, pouncing on him and Joshua lets it, lets it crash into him, lets it rip his flesh with_ _wolf_ _t_ _eeth_ _, lets it devour him as he falls back, back into the grave where darkness awaits._ _He falls, falls through the earth, deep, deeper still, deeper than the ground where it’s dark and humid and there’s a slow pulse there, a heartbeat; he listens as the corruption grapples with him, rends his flesh and tears his limbs, he listens_ _until_ _he understands what he hears; the pulse of the tree, the magic, and he asks, please, please give us an end._

 _“Is it really what you want?” a voice asks_ _then_ _, an old voice where the chill of countless winters tread._

 _“Yes,” Joshua says, feeling his sanity break under the pain,_ _under_ _the grief and the_ _remorse._

_“Devoured until nothing is left, your soul shattered, your body torn asunder.”_

_“Yes!” Joshua repeats,_ _and there are hands in his chest, breaking_ _his_ _bones, rending_ _his_ _flesh._

 _“Lies,” says the voice. But there_ _i_ _s no anger, no reproach in its tone._ _Just a deep sadness, a deep weariness. “You_ _were here, once. And the trespasser came.”_

 _Jeonghan’s face flashes in Joshua’s mind, the way he’d looked the last time he’d seen him; desperate, resolute,_ _grieving and_ _beautiful._

_“Yes,” the voice says, “he asked, and I let him take your soul from me. You were not to come back.”_

_“What do you want?”_ _Joshua asks, pushing the words past_ _his_ _lips through searing pain._

 _“There is nothing that I want. There is nothing you can_ _give_ _me.”_

 _T_ _here’s a silence, Joshua closing his eyes on burning tears, and it seems like a century before the voice speaks again, a century of agony._

 _“It had been quiet for so long. S_ _o long you spent s_ _leeping in your grave._ _And the trespasser came,_ _an_ _d I remembered,_ _then_ _. I remembered what it was like._ _I remembered how it felt, wh_ _at were my thoughts,_ _and the words to voice them.”_

 _“I don’t understand,” Joshua says, quietly, quietly, his life slipping_ _from him_ _as his blood floods the earth._

 _“You brought back what was torn from me,”_ _the voice answers him,_ _and all pain ceases. Joshua blink_ _s_ _back tears, look_ _ing_ _down at the corruption anchored in his chest, clawing at his naked bones. It has stopped, confusion and yearning painted on its distorted face._

 _“It is enough._ _You gave enough," the voice says, and all dissolve_ _s_ _before Joshua’s eyes, the voice and the heartbeat and the corruption, his own mangled body and the terrible pain nesting there. There’s a last though_ _t_ _, before h_ _e_ _gives_ _in_ _, a last thought that brands itself_ _upon his tattered mind_ _._ _There is someone else buried in the yew tree._

  
  


**3.**

When Minghao falls, Jeonghan is there to catch him. He folds like reeds against his chest and Jeonghan accompanies him to the ground where they both kneel, fitted against each other. His throat is raw from chanting, his hands sore, locked for so long in the same gesture.

“Do you think it worked?” Minghao hears himself ask, and he feels Jeonghan tense against him.

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan answers quietly. Minghao regrets his words then, but it is too late to take them back and he shifts, sitting up to stare at Jeonghan.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect him. Or anyone.”

“It wasn’t your role,” Jeonghan says then, a sad smile tugging at his lips. “I don’t blame you. I don’t blame Wonwoo. Joshua–” Jeonghan interrupts himself, voice faltering on the name. He sets his jaw, swallowing hard before pursuing.

“Joshua knew what he was doing. It was the only way. He… He wanted to do it,” Jeonghan finishes, averting his gaze to the floor.

 _He talks about him in the past tense_ , Minghao notes, and the grief he had managed to keep at bay floods him now, exhaustion pouring into his limbs and loss was never so keenly felt. But he won’t cry; enough tears had already been shed. He sits up instead, gazing at the two men lying on the bed and where one’s chest rises and falls to the rhythm of his breath, the other remains dreadfully still, skin pale, face slack. Minghao knows what must be done now, and he rises slowly, skirting to the edge of the bed and there is no heartbeat under the fingers he presses to Joshua’s wrist, there is no breath on the small mirror he brings to his lips.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Jeonghan says suddenly, and when Minghao turns towards him he’s still seated on the floor, red-rimmed eyes where tears rise.

“You can,” Minghao answers, voice quiet. “You must. We have to say goodbye.”

Jeonghan nods then, biting his lips to keep the sobs from breaking and it’s still a few minutes more before he gets up, coming to stand next to Minghao and he looks down at Joshua, Joshua crowned in flowers, his delightful features forever stilled, his haunting eyes now blinded. He raises a tentative hand to his brow, pushing back a few strands of his silky hair; bends to plant a kiss on his forehead.

“He’s already so cold,” he says, and he turns to Minghao, burying his head in his shoulder, quiet tears dampening the fabric of his shirt.

Night has fallen, when they start. They have moved a still slumbering Wonwoo to Jeonghan’s room upstairs, Jeonghan’s room full of Joshua’s things, books and clothes and the pictures he liked to draw, stuck haphazardly onto the walls. And it hurts, just looking at them, a hollow feeling expanding like vines in Minghao’s chest, growing to ensnare his lungs, his heart, his guts. Minghao averts his eyes and he knows then how painful their grief will be, remnants of Joshua’s presence strewn about the house, reminders they’ll never want to erase.

Silence follows them back, settling over the room as they kneel by the bed, by Joshua’s still form. Quietly they strip the body, Minghao bringing from the kitchen a basin of warm water where Jeonghan wets a white cloth he uses to wash Joshua’s skin. Carefully, he dabs at the blood upon his chest, at the rune he carved there, and as he works Minghao hums a gentle chant. They work slowly, carefully, and it’s a long goodbye that they make, each gesture the last, each look meant to retain, to remember.

As Minghao combs Joshua’s hair, Jeonghan weaves together the asphodel and the astilbe blooms, crowning Joshua’s brow in white and crimson. They dress him in the best clothes they have, and Minghao brings white linen from his closet that he sets by the foot of the bed. There’s soft footsteps then, and when they turn towards the open door Wonwoo is standing on the threshold, face grim, hands curled into fists. Minghao springs to his feet, walking over to him but Wonwoo takes a step back before he can reach him.

“He’s…?”

Minghao nods, lips drawn in a taut line and Wonwoo’s face does something strange then, brows furrowing, mouth drawing in a taut line.

“How do you feel?” Minghao asks him, and Wonwoo gazes back, hesitation in his face.

“I feel… Strange. Empty. It’s never been this quiet.”

“It worked, then.”

Wonwoo nods, his gaze darting beyond Minghao to the body on the bed, to Jeonghan kneeling next to it.

“Is there anything I can help with?” he eventually asks, and still he looks unsure, tentative as Minghao nods, pulling him into the room.

They spread the linen on the bed, and upon it scatter the ashes of cedar wood, Jeonghan watching them despondently. He stands when they move Joshua upon the shroud, takes it upon himself to cover his hands in ashes as Minghao and Wonwoo light the candles at the foot of the bed. And then, there’s nothing more to do. Jeonghan kneels by the side of the bed, holding Joshua’s hand in his, ashes staining his skin. Minghao and Wonwoo sit together by the candles, neither too far nor too close, and they wait, silence blanketing the room. It’s peaceful, Minghao realizes, the burning grief he’d felt resolving itself in a gentler sadness as they’d worked, a sadness lodged deep in his bones and he knows it will remain there, a constant companion he’ll learn to know. Jeonghan pillows his head upon his arm, Joshua’s hand still clutched in his as he closes his eyes and maybe he’s looking for him, Minghao thinks, looking for him in dreams where the dead linger.

“Minghao,” Wonwoo whispers then, dragging his attention to himself. “What are we going to do now?”

“He wanted to be buried with his brother. It’s a place where no one will find them. It’s protected,” Minghao answers, eyes trained back to Joshua. Wonwoo nods, shifting a bit closer to him and he looks too eager, something febrile in his gaze.

“When I was – in there, the shadow took over.”

“What?”

“It took over my body. I couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything. But I still felt things.”

“And?”

“I didn’t– at first it was only the usual, you know, the hate and the fear. But then, then something happened and there was peace. Suddenly it felt – yeah, it felt peaceful, nothing hurt anymore.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Wonwoo says, looking at Joshua and when Minghao stares at him there’s something strange in his face, something too hopeful for such a gruesome day. “But I think there was something – someone else in there with us. And it wasn’t hostile.”

“What are you saying?” Minghao asks sternly, the strange hope he can see on Wonwoo’s face lighting a disturbing warmth in his chest.

“I’m saying something else was in there with us and it felt like it was, I don’t know, compassionate? It stopped the pain, it stopped everything. So what I’m saying is, like, what if he’s not dead? What if the thing helped him. What if he’s just lost?”

Minghao stares at Wonwoo, motionless, his whole body tensing as he searches for something in Wonwoo’s dark eyes. And then, he snaps.

“Jeonghan,” he half-yells, tripping over himself in his haste to get up, Wonwoo on his heels. Jeonghan’s head snaps up from his resting place, bleary eyes looking them over.

“What?”

“You need to call him. Joshua.”

“What? Why?” Jeonghan repeats, confusion evident in his face as Minghao slicks his hair back, a slight frenzy taking over him.

“Call him, his soul, you know. He had the amulet, right? Where’s the amulet.”

“Here,” Wonwoo says, extending his hand and Minghao grabs the small object within, forcing it into Joshua’s ashy palm.

“What are you doing?” Jeonghan asks, taken aback.

“Look, Wonwoo says – he thinks there was something else with them, and maybe, it just, look, maybe he’s just lost, we need to try, right? If there’s a chance–”

“But he’s not even breathing–”

“Weirder things have happened,” Minghao says, and Jeonghan stares at him for half a second, searching, before he kneels by the bed, taking Joshua’s hand in his.

“I’ll need help,” he says before closing his eyes, and Minghao knows what he must do. He goes to stand by the bed, folds his fingers into the right gesture and they still hurt, and his throat is still raw when he opens his mouth to sing, a plea, a lament in the old tongue. He can feel Wonwoo beside him, standing close, too close, his warmth seeping into him and Minghao uses it, uses his strength and his tenacity; he bends his fingers a little more, sings a little louder and as Jeonghan slumps over the bed there’s a sharp intake of breath on his side, Wonwoo going to kneel at the other side of the bed, taking Joshua’s cold hand in his, pressing the amulet further into his palm and Minghao watches him and he knows he has no magic, not anymore, but sometimes simple warmth is enough, sometimes genuine hope is enough.

And then, when Minghao’s voice almost gives out, when Jeonghan’s slumped form shudders, Joshua draws a breath. Time stops, in the little room. They all stare at him, stare at the man on the bed, holding their breath but the lull doesn’t last – Minghao starts chanting again, loud and clear; Jeonghan’s brows furrow in concentration, eyes tightly shut, and Wonwoo, Wonwoo prays all the spirits he remembers from a childhood spent in a shaman’s home, crouching near his uncles as they played for his mother to dance. Sansin the mountain spirit and Chilseong the seven stars, Dokseong the lonely saint and Yongwang the dragon king and one of them must listen, they must, and Joshua’s hand is warming in his as he holds it all the more tighter.

After the first breath comes another, Joshua’s chest rising and falling in a steadying rhythm and as Minghao’s voice breaks on a last word his eyelids flutter, eyes snapping open, mouth parting on a silent scream.

“Joshua–” Jeonghan breaths out, before tears spill from his eyes and he leans to hug him, burying his head in his chest as Joshua brings a hesitant hand to his hair, confusion in his face.

“What happened?” he asks groggily and Jeonghan springs up, hitting him square in the chest.

“Is death your hobby? How many times will I have to take care of your corpse?” he half-yells, hitting him again and amazingly Joshua laughs, weakly fending off Jeonghan’s hands, caging them in his when Jeonghan’s halfhearted hits lose even more of their power.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I’m not dead, am I?”

“No thanks to you,” Jeonghan snarls and Joshua laughs again, tugging to bring him back to himself.

“We gotta do something about your savior complex,” Jeonghan mumbles against his chest but he’s still crying and the hands he fists in Joshua’s shirt hold on so very tight.

Joshua looks up then, to Minghao at the foot of the bed who stares back with wide eyes, a jumble of confused feelings crashing against his ribs but it’s relief, most of all, relief and an intense joy that blooms on his skin and he has to sit down, falling in the desk chair behind him.

“You’re back,” he says, voice raw and throat dry.

“I am,” Joshua answers and Minghao crumbles, burying his face in his hands, the sobs he had trapped in his chest bursting, exhaustion and grief and fear falling from him in salty tears.

“Are you gonna cry too?” Minghao hears Joshua ask and he looks through his fingers, Joshua staring at Wonwoo seated on the floor by the bed.

“No,” Wonwoo says, shifting to his knees so Joshua can see him better, “I’m good. How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” Joshua says, a furrow in his brow. “Good? Not dead at the very least.”

Wonwoo nods as Joshua frames Jeonghan’s face in his hands, pushing him away from his chest.

“It’s thanks to you,” Joshua says, staring at Jeonghan’s eyes, “it’s thanks to you that I am back. There is something – someone, buried in the yew tree. And it is from them that the magic came. Twined in the branches and the roots where it grew for centuries.”

“Who are they?” Jeonghan asks, voice strained.

“I do not know,” Joshua answers, hands tracing Jeonghan’s cheekbones, the line of his jaw. “But you woke them, when you came to find me. I think they sent me back for you. To repay their debt of gratitude.”

Both Wonwoo and Minghao averts their eyes when Joshua leans further in, kissing Jeonghan who slumps against him, hugging him to himself. Minghao gestures to Wonwoo then, and they file out of the room, quietly closing the door behind them. They stay silent as they cross the corridor to the library, Wonwoo sprawling on the couch as Minghao starts to gather the books he had disturbed during the hellish week they had spent preparing Joshua’s sacrifice, saying goodbyes that never felt good enough.

“I’m so relieved,” Wonwoo breathes out, burying his face in his hands. Minghao glances at him, staring back at the shelves to put away the volumes he’s holding.

“Are you really feeling okay?”

There’s a silence during which Minghao doesn’t look back, focusing on his task. When Wonwoo speaks again his voice is slow, thoughtful.

“I don’t feel like myself. My dad was young when he broke, and so when the shadow came into my being I was still a child. It has always been there. Is it weird if I feel – not sad, but. I don’t know who I am without it. It’s a bit – strange. Scary.”

“Do you have any family left?” Minghao turns towards Wonwoo then, and he has curled up on the sofa, knees brought up to his chest; he looks soft, like this, almost vulnerable, too young, too young for the burden he had to carry.

“Yeah. My mum’s around. Uncles too. They all live near Busan. Did I made it seem I was some sort of tragic orphan?”

Minghao huffs, a small smile on his lips when he answers.

“Nah, that role’s already taken. You just seem – lonely.”

“Look who’s talking. We’re just. Not that close anymore. When dad went mad it became… Difficult. My mum’s a shaman. She thought she could save me. And of course she couldn’t, and it took a toll on everyone. I thought it would be better if I left. So I did.”

Minghao nods, turning back to the shelves where he arranges already tidied books. He can feel Wonwoo’s gaze on him and he knows that he is waiting, waiting for him to take the first step, the one that will bring them closer but Minghao still has no name for the feelings in his chest and he doesn’t know if he can do it, doesn’t know if he can let someone else in, someone that might disappear one day, someone that might see in him more than the really is; a little broken, a little lonely – someone flawed, someone hollow and there’s so much to be disappointed in.

So he keeps stacking books, and his next words taste like ash on his tongue.

“You should go back. To your family, I mean. They must be worried about you.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo says after a heavy silence where Minghao’s hands still on the shelves. “I guess they must be.”

There’s half a beat where Minghao’s heart crumbles in his chest but before he can turn around, before he can swallow back his words Wonwoo has left the couch, Wonwoo has crossed the room and Wonwoo is closing the door behind him, the sound of his footsteps fading down the hallway. Minghao folds then, sinks to the floor, and his eyes burn when he closes them.

  
  


**4.**

There’s a bunch of clothes neatly folded on Minghao’s bed and he cannot force himself to step into the room, staring at them from the threshold. His sweaters had been slightly too small on Wonwoo, sleeves reaching too high on his wrists, the fabric hugging his chest and he cannot remember how long Wonwoo had stayed, days and nights bleeding into each other.

There’s soft footsteps, the smell of tea and when Minghao looks Jeonghan is leaning against the door frame, staring at the same sweaters folded upon the bed, a mug cradled in his hands. Since Joshua’s awakening he looked brighter, softer, too; easy smiles and a new light in his eyes.

“Why did you let him leave?” Jeonghan asks then, sipping at his tea without looking at Minghao.

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“Don’t you like him? Or did I get that all wrong.”

“It doesn’t really matter.”

“I think that’s all that matters,” Jeonghan says, sighing. When Minghao glances at him there’s a seriousness in his face that didn’t use to be there. Jeonghan looks back, smiling a soft smile and Minghao averts his eyes; some things hurt even if they’re not meant to.

“You should let yourself get what you want,” Jeonghan says, looking back inside the room. “He liked you too, I think.”

“I know,” Minghao says, garnering himself a curious glance from Jeonghan.

“Why then?”

“He liked the magic. He liked the witch. The one that came into his dreams and dragged him out.”

Jeonghan keeps staring, steam rising from the mug in his hands and Minghao watches as the volutes disappear into the air.

“How can you be so sure? Did you ask him? You didn’t even try, did you? You didn’t talk to him.”

“It’s too late now anyway.”

Jeonghan sighs, taking a sip of his tea and grimacing when it burns his tongue.

“You’re allowed to be happy, Hao, you know that, right? You don’t have to be perfect for people to love you.”

“I know.”

“It doesn’t look like you do.”

“Can you get off my case?” Minghao asks, no bite in his voice. Jeonghan shrugs, blowing on his mug before straightening, waving as he turns back down the corridor.

“You’re really tiring, you know that?”

Minghao makes a face and Jeonghan flips him off, smiling, before disappearing in the library. Minghao sighs then, turning towards the clothes on his bed and he takes a step and another, refolding the sweaters the way he likes it before putting them back into his dresser.

He finds the plates, then. The ones Wonwoo had dried and put away in the wrong cabinet. He stares at them for longer than he should, remembering the way Wonwoo had looked under the soft glow of the kitchen lights, the way it had hurt, deep and cutting, when he had turned his back, how his voice had sounded when he’d said _I won’t fight you_ , and the regret, the regret that had never really left, nesting there under Minghao’s heart.

“Are you burning everything on purpose?” a voice asks and he jumps, turning to Joshua who walked up to the stove, turning off the gas.

“Ah, sorry, I was spacing out.”

“I can see that,” Joshua says, an eyebrow raised as Minghao retrieves the bowl he wanted from the cabinet, grabbing another one when Joshua looks at him with pleading eyes. They sit at the kitchen table, face to face, silently digging into their food.

“Something’s bothering me,” Joshua says then, and Minghao lifts his head, worry suddenly eating at him.

“If I had died,” he continues, unaware of Minghao’s unease, “how were you guys even planing to cart my corpse all across town to my brother’s grave?”

Minghao laughs then, relieved at the inanity of the question.

“Wheelchair and sunglasses,” he answers plainly, bringing his attention back to his food.

“Are you serious?”

“Deadly.”

“Ha. Whose bright idea was it?”

“Wonwoo,” Minghao says, and he hopes Joshua didn’t hear the way his voice faltered on the name.

“Wow,” Joshua says, swallowing around a mouthful. “so you almost all ended up in jail. I’ll let him know it was the worst idea ever.”

“You’ll let him know?” Minghao asks, raising his head.

“Yeah. We’re texting!” Joshua excitedly answers, fishing from his pocket the smartphone Jeonghan had bought him a couple months ago. “He gave me his number before leaving. He’s teaching me emojis.”

“He’s teaching you emojis,” Minghao repeats flatly. He’s not sure how he feels about this. He had thought that when Wonwoo had left, he had left for good, disappearing from his life and from everyone else’s, too. But it’s just him, Minghao learns. Wonwoo is out there somewhere, sending texts to Joshua, putting that excited glint in his eyes and Minghao sits there, wondering about the sinking feeling in his stomach, about the unjust annoyance taking over him when he looks at Joshua, at his fingers painstakingly typing over the keyboard of his phone.

He finishes his food, the conversation turning morose and Joshua must know something is wrong but he doesn’t ask, doesn’t try to pry from him answers Minghao doesn’t have to give and it makes it worse, somehow; Joshua’s always careful, and he doesn’t deserve the hostility Minghao can feel rising from the depths of his guts. He’s allowed to make friends. He’s allowed to talk to Wonwoo, wherever he is. Minghao just wishes it didn’t sting this much. But things hurt, sometimes, even if they’re not meant to.

Minghao finds refuge in the library, sitting on pillows at the foot of the couch where Jeonghan is laying, a book open before him. It’s strange, to have nothing to do. Minghao sits and wonders what he can do with the hole in his chest that used to be filled with the anguish, the grief of these past weeks and the ones before that, when Joshua was still laying under twisted branches and smashed bones, when Jeonghan stalked the corridors with a wistful sadness dodging his heels. Minghao glances at him, lying there on the couch, reading muted words on white pages and he looks soothed, softened, no lines of worries in his face, no more bruises under his eyes. His heart swells, then, and he looks down at his own hands to quell the teary feeling he can feel blooming against his ribs.

Maybe this is what he can put there, in this dark place; bring close the people of his house, let his feelings for them bloom unfettered and a thought rises then, unbidden. One of them he has already lost, one of them he never truly had and wrecked everything before it could grow because he was scared, too scared. Minghao sighs, shifts on his cushions, tilting his head back as ugly feelings rise again; there’s Joshua’s excited face in his mind, lighted by his phone and Minghao knows whose words he’s reading, and he wants them for himself but he wrecked it, he wrecked it, and Minghao closes his eyes on a deep sigh.

“That sounded very dramatic,” Jeonghan’s voice rises, and when Minghao opens his eyes he has rested his book on his belly, hands crossed over it and he’s peering down at him intently. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Minghao says because he knows how he will sound; bitter, jaded, unfairly jealous. But Jeonghan isn’t fooled this easily. He shifts, sighing, sitting up to see Minghao better.

“Something’s clearly bothering you, I can feel it from here. So either you tell me, or you go mope somewhere else.”

Minghao makes a face, but there is no annoyance in Jeonghan’s face. He looks at him with a soft concern, and Minghao averts his gaze, looking down at his hands twisting together.

“I just,” he starts, trying to find the right words. “Did you know Joshua and Wonwoo were texting?”

Jeonghan sends him a pointed look and Minghao winces, not missing the way Jeonghan stifles a smile.

“Yeah, they’re like best friends or something. Joshua loves emojis. Wonwoo’s getting him into memes now. I’m a bit scared to be honest.”

“Oh, okay.” Minghao says, looking back down. “That’s… great,” he finishes lamely as Jeonghan rolls his eyes, shifting from the couch to the floor where he elbows Minghao in the ribs.

“Doesn’t sound that great.”

“It’s just. Why isn’t he texting me?”

Jeonghan looks flabbergasted for a while, before he manages to take a hold of himself.

“Dude, are you serious? He waited for you to ask him out and then you told him to go back to his mum. I wouldn’t text you either.”

“I didn’t do that,” Minghao answers weakly, rubbing the spot where Jeonghan’s freakishly pointy elbow had hit him.

“Didn’t you?” Jeonghan asks, eyebrows raised. “That’s what he told Joshua, though.”

“What?” Minghao shrieks, getting his voice under control with a cough. “Why would he tell Joshua that?”

“Because they’re friends, haven’t you been listening?”

Minghao falls silent, Jeonghan patiently waiting for him to digest that new information.

“What else did he tell him?” Minghao asks then, voice quiet.

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan says, stretching his arms above his head. He lets them fall back down with a sigh, patting Minghao on the shoulder, “I’m not privy to their every conversations.”

“Aren’t you, though?”

It’s Jeonghan’s turn to fall silent, chewing the inside of his cheek before he gives in.

“Okay, yeah. He told him you were a stuck up prick but that was when he was still pissed.”

“He was pissed?”

“Well…” Jeonghan hesitates, wincing slightly. “You managed to dump him twice in three days and also told him to go back to his mum.”

“Why are you so hung up on the mum thing?” Minghao asks, a bit riled up. This isn’t going his way at all.

“Cause it’s awful but also funny,” Jeonghan answers with a grin.

“Glad my misery amuses you.”

“If it can make you feel any better, he’s also asking for updates on how you’re doing.”

“I guess it does,” Minghao shifts, a little uneasy, a little embarrassed.

“So what have we learned from this?” Jeonghan asks, clapping his hands together.

“Don’t tell guys you have the hots for to go back to their mum,” Minghao answers dutifully, “and that if I ever want to keep something a secret from you, I better not tell Joshua,” he adds after a pause.

“Yeah, better not. Boy can’t keep a secret for shit.”

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

“We’re here to discuss your shortcomings, not mine,” Jeonghan retorts, trying to elbow him again but Minghao anticipates it, throwing his body to the side so Jeonghan goes to push him instead, Minghao sprawling over the pillows and he laughs, then; there’s some relief to be found in friends, in Jeonghan’s fierce kind of love.

Minghao asks Joshua for Wonwoo’s number, who gives it to him without questions.

 _I’m sorry,_ he texts, because he was never good with words.

There is no answer.

  
  


**5.**

Minghao really tries to bring out his best customer service smile but he knows his face is doing the thing where it’s somehow both murderous and royally bored. It doesn’t seem to faze the agitated kid in front of him though, nor his stoic friend standing a few feet behind him.

“You lied to me,” the kid’s saying, or repeating maybe, Minghao hadn’t been listening.

“I did not,” Minghao says, doing his best to root himself in the moment. Somehow this kind of thing always happens on Jeonghan’s lunch break. “My employee did.”

“Then you should take responsibility!”

“Why?” Minghao asks, and this seems to throw the kid for a loop, a slow smile creeping to the lips of his friend who’s staring at the kid with too much warmth in his eyes.

“Cause you hired him?” it comes out as a question and the kid winces, taking a step back when Minghao leans further over the counter.

“I didn’t really,” Minghao says with a shrug, “he was just kind of already there.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” the kid asks, his head tilted, and his friend’s smile is in full bloom now, Minghao catching his eye and he has to refrain the smile he feels coming on in turn.

“Just what I said. He was kind of already there, might as well get paid for it. The tarot readings were entirely his idea.”

“I want a refund,” the kid says then, crossing his arms over his chest. He doesn’t see his friend rolling his eyes, fidgeting in place.

“He didn’t make you pay, though,” Minghao answers. He remembers the kid now, his messy high school uniform and the inverted lovers on the wood of the counter.

“How do you know that?”

“You can’t scam a scammer,” Minghao says and the kid’s mouth falls open, an outraged noise escaping.

“So you did scam me!” he half-yells, and Minghao laughs. He vaguely registers the jingle of the bell as another customer comes in, but the kid has all his attention now; there is something amusing about him, about all his flailing, his too-loud voice and the quiet boy at his side.

“Did I try to sell you anything?”

“No, but you ruined my love-life,” the kid says dejectedly, trying to regain some of his earlier composure.

“Once again, not me. You know what, I’ll call Jeonghan here and you can take it up with him yourself. I already told him if you were to come back here crying I wouldn’t deal with it.”

“I’m not crying!” the kid yells in indignation and Minghao looks back to him with a pointed stare, opening the red curtains behind the counter.

“You’re this close,” he says, before bellowing Jeonghan’s name down the corridor.

“He’s kinda right,” Minghao can hear the quiet one tell his friend. “Your eyes were all puffy on the way here.”

“Vernon, please shut up,” the kid says urgently as Minghao smiles to himself, pretending that he didn’t hear. When Jeonghan’s slow footsteps echo down the corridor he turns back to the kids, gesturing for them to scoot over. He can see the back of a customer’s head over the shelves, his messy, slightly too long hair, and he’s reminded of another glowering customer of a few months ago, one who left a hole in his side. It happens more and more these days, that the smallest things will remind him of Wonwoo, revive these feelings he’s trying hard to bury, deep, deeper still yet they won’t let him be. They’re there in the smell of ginger and old letters, in black rice porridge and the violet of wilted mallows.

Minghao pushes through, ushering the kids in a corner of the shop when Jeonghan emerges from behind the curtains, the situation quickly explained to him. Minghao goes back to slump over the counter, pillowing his head on his arms and he watches the kid gesticulating, retelling the harrowing story of his failed relationship and Jeonghan smiles those soft smiles of his and talks in hushed whispers, placating gestures and all the right words. It seems so easy for him, easily loved and easily forgiven and Minghao wonders once more why nothing ever comes naturally to him. Neither words nor gestures, neither magic nor love. _I’m sorry_ , he’d written Wonwoo, too simple words to encompass all that he had truly meant.

 _I’_ _m sorry I’m the way I am,_ he’d meant. _I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you, I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry I didn’t give this a chance because I was scared and I_ _already_ _lost too much to_ _allow myself anything else to lose._

Minghao sighs, rubbing at his eyes and he didn’t think it would be so hard to have normalcy again. There was no more death hovering too near, no more danger, no more chants and no more lighted candles drawing moving shadows on too-pale faces. There was just him and his thoughts now, nothing else to focus on and of course he was happy, of course he was relieved that no one had to suffer, that Jeonghan looked new and bright and that Joshua’s lingering touches over Jeonghan’s hands didn’t spell too-hard goodbyes anymore. But he’d forgotten the emptiness of days lived for no reason. He’d forgotten the quiet grief of the archive room and the austerity of his office. And it was hard, sometimes, when the smell of ginger rose from Jeonghan’s tea, when Joshua asked for longans to add in his porridge, when shaggy-haired customers wandered between the shelves.

“These are crap,” a rude voice interrupts his thoughts, said customer scattering a fistful of crystals over the counter. Minghao jolts, straightening up, ready to yell back but the voice, the voice is eerily familiar and when he raises his gaze to the customer’s face the dark eyes he meets are the ones etched under his heart.

Minghao stares, speechless, and Wonwoo has changed, he really has. There’s colors in his face, his cheeks fuller; there’s no more of the unsettling darkness swirling in his eyes yet they’re still haunting in their beauty, and Minghao keeps staring, keeps staring until Wonwoo speaks again.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks in a soft voice, and Minghao snaps out of his stupor.

“A lot,” he answers, Wonwoo rolling his eyes. “What are you doing here?” he follows-up tentatively, face carefully blank.

Wonwoo fishes something out of his pocket, a phone he taps on a few times before letting it clatter on the counter amongst the crystals. Minghao glances at the bright screen and sees the words there, his words, his paltry _I’m sorry_ and he has time to notice Wonwoo hasn’t saved his number before he looks back up at him.

“You’re sorry?” Wonwoo’s saying and he’s angry, Minghao realizes, he is, eyes flashing and lips drawn in a taut line. “Don’t do stuff if you’re gonna be sorry for them later.”

“That’s… quite a hard line to live by,” Minghao ventures hesitantly and Wonwoo sucks in a breath, jaw locked tight.

“I’m sorry,” Minghao says then, the first words that comes to mind and it’s the wrong ones, it always is.

“What for? Sorry for being sorry?” Wonwoo snaps and Minghao almost recoils.

“I– I don’t know,” he says, hanging his head and it’s so strange, to have Wonwoo there, flesh and blood right on the other side of the counter instead of a ghost treading his dreams. He could just reach out and touch him but the counter seems like an insurmountable barrier between them, and so Minghao’s hands remain sagely at his side.

“Why did you tell me this?” Wonwoo presses and for the first time there’s distress in his eyes and he’s hurting, Minghao realizes, he’s hurting because of him. “Say you’re sorry one more time and I swear–”

“I just–” Minghao interrupts himself, glancing at the kids further away, still engrossed in conversation with Jeonghan and this is not the time nor the place but Wonwoo is here and he can’t let him down again, not this time.

“I didn’t trust you,” Minghao eventually says, gaze steady, “I didn’t trust you not to leave me when it was all over. When it was just me and nothing magic, nothing grand. I’m not who you think I am.”

Wonwoo doesn’t say anything, not for a long time and Minghao cannot hold his gaze anymore; he looks down at the counter instead, at the scattered crystals and the phone which screen has gone dark.

“I know you, though,” Wonwoo says then, voice quiet and when Minghao risks a glance there’s a new sadness in his face, one that isn’t for himself. “I know you a little bit. You scam new age kids out of their allowance and you keep too many old journals cause you want a story to be a part of. You’re scared, you’re scared all the time and I know about that too, you’re scared and you’re lonely and you look too serious but then you go and say the dumbest shit.”

Wonwoo stops then, looking down and there’s a new resolve in his eyes when he finds Minghao’s gaze again.

“I don’t care about the magic,” Wonwoo says, slowly. “I care about you.”

Minghao opens his mouth on words that won’t get out, a jumble of confused feelings crashing against his ribs and he can’t stop the hand that shoots out, splaying his fingers over Wonwoo’s mouth to silence him. He cannot help the blush that he can feel rising to his cheeks either, his ears on fire.

“What,” Wonwoo mumbles from behind Minghao’s fingers.

“Don’t say shit like that in public!” Minghao hisses, and the kids in the corner have fallen suspiciously silent and Minghao doesn’t even look their way when he drags Wonwoo behind the counter, through the red curtains all the way to his room.

He shoves Wonwoo inside, closing the door against which he leans and Wonwoo’s staring at him, an eyebrow raised, something vaguely amused in his face.

“What’s with the freak out?” he asks, and Minghao wills the tension to leave his body as he sags against the door.

“If Jeonghan heard you he’ll give me so much shit. What the hell was that line?”

Wonwoo shrugs, stepping closer, crowding Minghao against the door and he looks so good, now that there’s no more bruises under his eyes, now that he filled out, skin golden and eyes bright and Minghao feels like melting into the door.

“It made you blush, though.”

“Everything makes me blush,” Minghao says tartly but Wonwoo only laughs and Minghao knows what is going to happen now, Wonwoo telegraphing each of his gestures; the slow lift of a hand he’ll fit against Minghao’s jaw, the angle of his body he’ll melt into his, the way his lips quirk, the way his head tilts and Minghao doesn’t run, Minghao lets him come and Wonwoo kisses exactly as he remembers, slow and gentle, a flooding warmth Minghao lets in, lets curl around the beating of his heart and fill the hole in his side, lets revive the feelings buried there, always too close to the surface.

“What is this?” Minghao asks when they part, a little breathless, a little dazed.

“You like me,” Wonwoo says simply and Minghao can only nod, a strange feeling unfurling in his chest; exhaustion, sadness, a deep longing and the fear, the loneliness of the past days, of the past years, a weariness etched deep in his bones he doesn’t know how to carry anymore; it flows out of himself but Wonwoo’s there, safe and solid and beautiful and Minghao sags against him, steady arms wrapping around his back, folding him against a warm chest.

“Yeah,” Minghao says lamely, words muffled in Wonwoo’s shirt, “I like you. I’m sorry I… I’m shit at explaining myself.”

“It’s fine,” Wonwoo says, “I’ll understand anyway.”

And for the first time Minghao believes that this must be true, that this is fine, that maybe he can allow for a little vulnerability, that maybe he can allow to put his heart at risk. It should be fine, if it’s Wonwoo. So he lets himself melt against him and Wonwoo stirs them to the bed where they sit side by side and Minghao finds that his mangled words aren’t needed then, not when it comes to this discovery of another self; it’s a bit awkward, at first, an embarrassed smile on Minghao’s lips as he surrenders to his first impulse to reach out and touch, trace the lines of Wonwoo’s face, the slope of his nose and the bow of his mouth and _I missed you,_ his fingers spell, _I missed you and I feared you were lost to me_ and Wonwoo knows, Wonwoo knows and he cages Minghao’s face in his hands to kiss him again, _you never lost me_ , and he embraces him to his chest, against his beating heart, _I would have always come back._

It’s later, much later when Minghao finds himself seated on the edge of the bed, Wonwoo cross-legged on the floor before him, head tilted as Minghao snips at the hair of his nape with the silver scissors he uses to trim his flowers.

“How short do you want them?” he asks, snipping at a silky strand.

“Shouldn’t you have asked me that beforehand?”

“I’m asking now.”

Wonwoo cranes his neck to glare at him over his shoulder and Minghao laughs, forcing Wonwoo’s head back. There’s something light in his chest, spilling warmth under his heart and he hopes it will last.

“We’re gonna put hair everywhere,” he says, hiding his affect under trifles.

“Again, should have think of that beforehand,” Wonwoo says, turning to face Minghao just so he can see him roll his eyes. And then, he pulls his shirt over his head, draping it over his shoulders, dark strands falling to the floor. Minghao is momentarily speechless, staring at the golden skin as he extends a hand hesitantly but there is no more reason to hold back now, and he touches his fingers to Wonwoo’s collarbone who shivers under his touch; Minghao’s hands are cold, always cold but Wonwoo doesn’t move back and Minghao’s fingers drift downward, resting right above his heart and there’s a rune etched there, the scar tissue risen under Minghao’s fingers. Wonwoo’s gaze drifts down and a wistful smile graces his lips as he leans into the touch.

“Somehow I thought it would be gone,” he says, voice quiet. “But I’m glad it isn’t.”

“Why?” Minghao asks, stare riveted to the shape of _eihaz_ carved in Wonwoo’s flesh. Wonwoo shrugs, and his hand grabs at Minghao’s wrist, pulls it away from himself as he tangles their fingers together, Minghao’s cold hand trapped in his own warm one.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs, “it’s something that happened, and it should leave a trace. I don’t want to forget.”

“I don’t think we could, even if we wanted to,” Minghao says and Wonwoo laughs, grip tightening on Minghao’s hand.

“Yeah, fair enough. It’s just… How you like looking at your old pictures, your old letters. It hurts, but not only that, you know. I don’t know, it’s just… It makes you feel like you’re a part of something.”

Minghao nods, thinking back to the little room at the foot of the stairs and all that is contained within, letters and journals and yellowed pictures of people he never knew and yet there’s a strange comfort to be found there, amidst the grief and the loss, a strange feeling of belonging, of knowing that all those who came before him would have loved him, too, just as they loved each other and fought for what they thought was right. _So much terrible things we have done_ _,_ that man had written, centuries ago, _so much terrible things we must do_. And he had done it for them, for him and for Jeonghan downstairs, for the arguing kids and Joshua curled up in the library, for Wonwoo standing before him, safe and free and beautiful, golden in the soft light of the waning afternoon.

“What is it?” Wonwoo asks, a crease of worry in his brow.

“Nothing,” Minghao answers, freeing his hand to wrap his arms around Wonwoo’s waist, pulling him to himself, nuzzling his head against his skin, warm and soft. “Can you stay here, tonight?”

“Yeah, for sure,” Wonwoo answers, tangling his fingers in Minghao’s hair, tilting his head back so he can lean in and kiss him.

  
  


**6.**

Wonwoo stays the night and the one after that, and another one still. There comes a time where he must leave, though, go back south to his family, to his shaman mother who dresses in white and dances to the sound of drums and flutes. He has a lot to learn, he says, and the emptiness the shadow left within him when it disappeared must be filled, with music and dance and the spirits that roam the plains. He empties the one bedroom apartment he lived in, the one where he wasted away, dodging sleep and death alike until he found the little shop, until he met a pair of dark eyes and a darker resolve.

Wonwoo stares at himself in the mirror of his empty bathroom, tugs at his shortened hair, pokes at his fuller cheeks and marvels at his own clear gaze. He tugs at his shirt, revealing the rune etched there above his heart and it seems paler, appeased just like he is. There’s a clatter behind him and he turns to find Minghao there, leaning against the doorframe, round glasses perched on his nose and arms crossed over his chest.

“Are you done admiring yourself?” he asks, an eyebrow raised.

“I’m hot,” Wonwoo answers as if he had just made a startling discovery. Minghao rolls his eyes, sighing an exhausted sigh but his smile is ruining the effect and he steps into the room, crowding Wonwoo against the sink.

“I hadn’t noticed,” he says, kissing Wonwoo’s temple, dipping lower to mouth at his neck as Wonwoo lets his head fall back.

“We’re gonna be late,” he says, not doing anything to stop Minghao.

“I know,” Minghao says, straightening to gaze at Wonwoo, leaning in to kiss him, slow and languid, kiss these adored lips, their warmth spilling into him.

“Your mum already likes me anyway,” Minghao adds as they part, a little breathless, a little dazed. This makes Wonwoo laughs and he pushes away from the sink, skirting around Minghao but his hand catches his wrist and he leads him outside the bathroom.

“She’s your biggest fan, it’s not even funny. She’ll smother you in motherly love and you’ll regret ever accepting to come with me.”

“It doesn’t sound so bad,” Minghao says tentatively and Wonwoo looks back to him, a soft glint in his eyes before he kisses him again, quick and playful.

“It isn’t,” he says, grabbing the last bags they’ll have to cram in Minghao’s beat up car. They have hours of road before them, windows down and music blaring, loud laughs and quiet breaks in gas stations. When the smell of the ocean finally rises, when Minghao looks outside the window and sees the slopes of the mountains sink into the sea night is already falling and he looks back at Wonwoo’s profile, shadows stretching over his cheekbones, looks at his hands over the wheel, knowing their touch and the words they spell on his skin. And he’s happy, he realizes, right there in this moment; he has a place to belong, wind in his hair and loud songs on the radio.

“I love you,” he says then, because it feels like the right time and for once his words don’t fail him. Wonwoo glances at him, turning his eyes back on the road but one of his hands leaves the wheel to grab Minghao’s fingers, his cold fingers, always cold but Wonwoo never minds. He brings them to his mouth, laying a soft kiss over his phalanges and he keeps them there when he answers, his breath fanning over Minghao’s skin.

“I know,” he says, softly. And then, “I love you too,” and Minghao gasps, retracting his hand, this close to shove Wonwoo if only he wasn’t driving.

“Embarrassed?” Wonwoo is laughing, leaving the highway to go into the city.

“No,” Minghao says, heart hammering against his ribs. “I knew it too,” and his ears are burning, and they still are when Wonwoo parks in front of a little house at the foot of the mountain, an old tree there bending its heavy branches, red, white, green and yellow cloths knotted about the trunk. Minghao steps carefully, Wonwoo leading him by the hand inside the little courtyard where a woman is busy sorting red peppers drying on a white cloth and she raises his head when they enter, a smile blooming on her weathered face when she recognizes her son.

“Mum,” Wonwoo says, and he’s still holding Minghao’s hand when she hugs them both.

“Welcome,” she says, smiling. “Welcome home, sons.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got all up in my family feels for a bit here at the end I am sorry. 
> 
> Maybe you guessed that I still have some stuff to write about this universe so for those of you who are interested you can expect a few more fics with these characters !


End file.
